Croatia to quit border row tribunal after phone tap scandal

Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said Monday his country would withdraw from a tribunal to resolve a border row with Slovenia after a scandal in which its Slovenian member alleged tried to undermine the tribunal’s impartiality.

“The process has been contaminated… Croatia cannot stay in this arbitration. It has to quit,” Milanovic told reporters.

He spoke after meeting with opposition parties on the issue.

“We all think the same,” Milanovic said.

The decision to pull out has to backed by the parliament which is to convene over the issue on Wednesday, while the prime minister said he expected a “large support, hopefully unanimous.”

The scandal broke last week when Croatian newspaper Vecernji list published a series of tapped phone conversations between the Slovenian member of the arbitration tribunal, Jernej Sekolec, and Ljubljana’s intermediary dealing with it, Simona Drenik.

In the recordings the two openly discussed tactics for a ruling favourable to Slovenia.

Sekolec and Drenik have since resigned.

Croatia has also appealed to the European Union over the issue, as the issue concerns two members of the 28-nation bloc.

In 2009 the two former Yugoslav republics signed an EU-backed deal agreeing to create an arbitration tribunal to solve their long-standing dispute over 13 square kilometres (five square miles) of largely uninhabited land and Piran Bay in the northern Adriatic.

Each country was asked to propose a member of the five-member tribunal that would have to be impartial and, therefore, should not discuss the tribunal’s work with their government.

Slovenia, which has just 46 kilometres (29 miles) of coastline, believes its access to international waters is at stake because Croatia, whose coast stretches for 1,700 kilometres, wants the border to be drawn down the middle of the disputed bay.

Earlier this month, the arbitration tribunal announced it would decide on the dispute by December. That decision was to be binding for both countries.