Slovenia, Croatia leaders win backing to end rows

LJUBLJANA/ZAGREB, Aug 27 (Reuters) The prime ministers of Slovenia and Croatia won backing from their main parties today to start talks to end lingering disputes over borders, fishing and property which have strained relations for 16 years.

Both Slovenia, a member of the European Union, and Croatia, which hopes to join the EU around 2010, walked away from communist Yugoslavia in 1991. But they have not been able to resolve their bilateral disputes since then.

''I received full consent from all the parties in parliament today,'' Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader said in Zagreb after briefing the parties on his talks with Slovenia's Janez Jansa.

''This showed a high degree of political responsibility even though we are in an election year,'' Sanader said.

Jansa, who met Sanader at the Bled lake resort in Slovenia yesterday, also won support from his parliament, though several nationalist parties opposed any quick deal with Croatia.

''The support is high enough to carry on with the work,'' Jansa told reporters after winning the backing of his ruling coalition as well as the main opposition Social Democrats.

The wide range of support will likely make it easier to ratify any future agreements in the two national parliaments.

Jansa and Sanader, both conservative leaders, reached an informal agreement to resolve a row over their land and sea borders at The International Court of Justice in The Hague.

They also agreed to deal with each issue separately instead of treating them as a package, which often blocked progress in the past.

Those include arguments over sections of sea and land borders, the jointly owned Krsko nuclear power plant, frozen hard-currency assets of Croatian depositors in the now defunct Ljubljanska Banka and fishing rights in the northern Adriatic.

After a series of fishing rows and minor border incidents, serious talks began only this summer.

Slovenia holds the rotating EU presidency in the first half of 2008, and says it wants to focus on building closer ties between the EU and the Western Balkans -- Europe's last region still outside the bloc -- consisting mostly of former Yugoslav republics.

REUTERS SY HS2139