Slovenia, Croatia move to end old rows

BLED, Slovenia, Aug 26 (Reuters) The prime ministers of Slovenia and Croatia pledged today to end squabbling over borders, fishing and property which has marred relations since their independence in 1991.

Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa told reporters after meeting his Croatian counterpart Ivo Sanader that the two had reached an informal agreement to resolve an argument over their border at The International Court of Justice in The Hague.

''We will continue to try and solve all the other unsolved issues ourselves,'' he said. ''We think we should have some results by the end of this year.'' Sanader said the countries had also agreed to deal with each issue separately instead of treating them as a package, which has often blocked progress in the past.

European Union member Slovenia and Croatia, which hopes to join the bloc around 2010, were partners in the rebellion that destroyed communist Yugoslavia in 1990s, but have since been unable to solve their bilateral problems.

Those include arguments over patches of sea and land border, 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.

Efforts were renewed in 2005, with both countries run by new centre-right governments, but subsided quickly with few concrete results until this summer, when Slovenia started preparing for holding the EU presidency in the first half of 2008.

Sanader said Croatia would go ahead with proclaiming a protected fishing and ecology zone in the Adriatic, but would seek agreement from Adriatic neigbours Italy and Slovenia.

Croatia claimed a protected zone in the Adriatic in 2003, saying it wanted to put fishing and pollution under better control. After protests from Ljubljana and criticism from Brussels, it delayed it until January 2008. Croatian political analyst Zeljko Trkanjec said this was a historic moment for the two countries' relations.

''Brussels has made it clear this year that both countries had better sort out their problems, for the sake of their European future,'' he said.

REUTERS MS RAI2117