The prime ministers of Croatia and Slovenia, Jadranka Kosor and Borut Pahor respectively, agreed in the Slovenian lakeside resort of Bohinj on Saturday to have the issue of the now defunct Slovenian bank Ljubljanska Banka and its Croatian savings clients settled in accordance with international agreements, stressing that they expected the issue to be resolved over the next three months.
"We have determined the direction of the solution to that problem and we assume that it will be resolved in the next three months," Pahor told a news conference he held together with Kosor after the talks.
"The direction will be adjusted with the succession agreement and rights of individuals will not be limited," the Slovene prime minister said.
"We agreed on the direction we are taking and I am confident it will leads us to a solution that will be based on the signed international agreement and which will take into account individual rights," Kosor said.
Both prime ministers stressed that their meeting about the Ljubljanska Bank and its Croatian clients was equally important as the one held a year ago at the Trakoscan resort in Croatia when they set the path for the settlement of the two countries' border dispute.
Pahor and Kosor expressed conviction this long-standing dispute over Croatian clients' foreign currency savings deposits in Ljubljanska Banka, an issue which, along with the border dispute, has been weighing on relations between the two countries since the breakup of Yugoslavia, would be resolved as well.
The Slovenian government has stated on a number of occasions that the debt of Ljubljanska Banka could be settled as a multilateral succession issue among successors to the former Yugoslavia and it has suggested that another round of talks on the problem be held with the help of the Basel-based Bank for International Settlements.
In Croatia, the issue of Ljubljanska Banka's debt to its Croatian clients is seen as a civil law matter between the Slovenian bank and its Croatian clients.
According to Croatian National Bank Governor Zeljko Rohatinski, the total savings of Croatian depositors in Ljubljanska Banka in 1991 amounted to EUR 420 million, of which Croatia took over EUR 260 million as its public debt. Some of the bank's 130,000 depositors still claim directly from it EUR 160 million. All the figures represent principal without interest.
On the other hand, Ljubljanska Banka counts on claiming back EUR 157 million plus interest from Croatian companies to which it granted loans while operating in Croatia.
