"I appreciate his statement that there'll be no further obstacles to Croatia's EU accession negotiations. He said it both in this campaign for the referendum and in our conversation," Kosor said in a Croatian Television prime-time evening news programme.

When asked if Pahor had told her what kind of a referendum result he expected, Kosor said she would be talking to him later in the evening or in the morning, quoting Pahor as saying that Slovenia would not be obstructing Croatia's EU entry talks.

The agreement between the governments of Slovenia and Croatia to settle their border dispute by arbitration has resolved a key issue - it separated Croatia's EU integration process from resolution of the border dispute, Kosor said, recalling that since then Croatia has opened and closed more negotiating chapters than in the four years preceding the agreement.

"We have shown that we can foster a culture of dialogue. That dialogue continues and after this we will open and close the remaining chapters. We will live here forever together as good neighbours and we should finally close that book," Kosor said.

In her interview with the Croatian commercial television station Nova TV on Sunday evening, Kosor said that the government was not going to withdraw from Parliament its proposed amendments to labour legislation, repeating her invitation to the trade unions for talks.

She said that the Labour Act would not be changed until the amendments had been discussed with the trade unions, but stressed that if they kept rejecting talks Parliament would discuss and pass the amendments without them.

Kosor said that withdrawal of the amendments from Parliament, as proposed by the trade unions, was out of the question, but she left room for "some modifications".