Succession Reps Agree to Meet on Regular Basis
Officials in charge of succession to the former Yugoslavia on Monday adopted rules of procedure which Slovenia's representative said would allow them to work more effectively and to proceed to substantive issues.
According to Slovenia's Miha Pogacnik, the committee of high representatives for succession agreed to meet at least twice a year, or more often if necessary. The next meeting is to be held in Serbia in the autumn.
Pogacnik, who read a joint statement after the meeting in Brdo pri Kranju, said the adoption of the rules of procedure was a "first, although small, but very important step to it that we can now meet formally fully equipped so as to be able to start discussing individual substantive issues".
These were not discussed at the meeting, while the representatives talked about the "course of future meetings and how the countries see the methods to discuss the matter", Pogacnik said.
According to him, substantive issues are many, while the successor states are to submit proposals with their priorities to the host by the next meeting in Serbia.
At a joint press conference, high representatives declined to say what issues were at stake, while Pogacnik explained the "proposals will show where priorities meet". He added that a "consensus amongst all successor countries is needed to form an agenda".
The high succession representatives from Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia did not discuss who is to assume the guarantee of the former Yugoslavia for the foreign currency deposited with banks and their subsidies in the former federation.
Asked whether Croatia was willing to resume negotiations on the issue at the Basel-based Bank for International Settlements, as stipulated by the framework agreement on succession, the country's representative Snjezana Bagic said the issue had been discussed at the bilateral level for several years, and that "Croatia has never been opposed to discussing the issue at the bilateral level".
She added though, that it seemed everyone was now waiting for a decision by the European Court of Human Rights, which referred the case of three Croatian savers of the defunct Slovenian bank LB against Slovenia to its highest instance, the Grand Chamber.
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