PM to meet leaders of parliamentary parties Thursday

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic has invited leaders of parliamentary parties for consultations starting at 1pm on Thursday as part of preparations for further political talks with Slovenia, a government press release said on Wednesday.

Plenkovic has said several times that a meeting with Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar is being prepared, with the border dispute as the main topic, and that it should take place in Zagreb before the end of September.

Slovenia insists on the implementation of the border arbitration ruling, while Croatia does not recognise it.

On 29 July 2015, the Croatian parliament unanimously adopted a conclusion committing the government to terminate the arbitration agreement between the two countries after the agreement was substantially breached and the arbitration process irreversibly contaminated by Slovenia. The Croatian government terminated the agreement a day later.

Croatia terminated the agreement after it was revealed that the Slovenian representative on the arbitration panel, Jernej Sekolec, and Slovenian Foreign Ministry official Simona Drenik had discussed the arbitration process and a strategy which involved lobbying other arbitration judges.

Croatia did not recognise the subsequent ruling by the arbitration tribunal, arguing that the dispute should be resolved bilaterally.

A Slovenian parliamentary committee is meeting in Ljubljana on Thursday to discuss the readiness of the country's military to implement the arbitration ruling. The meeting was called by the committee chairman, Zan Mahnic from the largest opposition party the SDS.

Cerar has called for the meeting to be cancelled several times in recent days, saying that its topic is "completely inappropriate". He warned that the move was giving wrong signals to the international community about the dispute with Croatia because Slovenia intended to implement the arbitration ruling peacefully.

Text: Hina

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