Addressing reporters after the weekly government session, Pahor said that he would not wish to raise expectations, noting it would be a success, if Bohinj became for LB what Trakoscan was for the border issue.
On 31 July last year, the PMs met in the town of Trakoscan, Croatia, starting a dialogue which resulted in the border arbitration treaty.
"It is my wish that the upcoming meeting with Prime Minister Kosor would be the next step, also regarding the second most complex issue in bilateral relations...the Ljubljanska banka (LB) issue," Pahor told the press.
He said that after yesterday's meeting of foreign ministers Samuel Zbogar and Gordan Jandrokovic, the FMs' delegates continued a meeting last night and met again today.
Although the Slovenian PM is optimistic, the governor of the Croatian central bank said today after meeting Kosor that Slovenia's biggest bank NLB would not be allowed to enter the Croatian market before the LB issue is resolved.
Croatia believes that NLB is the successor of LB and should repay the debt of the defunct bank from before the breakup of Yugoslavia, while Slovenia would like to see the issue resolved as part of the Yugoslavia succession process under the auspices of the Basel Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
Rohatinski, who was the first Croatian official to indicate this option in June, said today that although the BIS negotiations were not successful before, the countries could give it another go.
Nineteen years after the break-up of Yugoslavia, some 132,000 of the bank's clients in Croatia have still not received their foreign currency deposits. They claim more than EUR 172m in deposits.
However, LB too has been unable to recover EUR 400m in claims from Croatian companies.
