Failure to reach agreement over ex-Yugo gold

Unlike all previous years, when the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was stalling talks about succession, the latest halt has been caused by Macedonia's request that the balance sheet of assets in the Basel bank be made before any decisions are adopted.

At a joint news conference, the governor of Yugoslavia's central bank, Mladjan Dinkic, said the bank held 46 tonnes of gold, 8,000 bonds and a certain amount of foreign currency worth US$477 million.Dinkic said the value of the gold was reduced by US$114 million due to a drop in the price of gold on the world market.

He expressed dissatisfaction that Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia requested that the property from the bank be distributed in line with a European Central Bank model and not in line with a model of the International Monetary Fund, to which Slovenia and Croatia had agreed.

Croatia and Slovenia, as the two most developed former Yugoslav republics, made the highest contributions to the then joint state and in case the European Central Bank model is applied, they will get a worse deal in the distribution of the joint property whereas other republics will be in a more favourable position than they would if the IMF model was applied.

Bosnia-Herzegovina has offered a combined property distribution model but it will be discussed at the next meeting in Zagreb in January or at a Brussels meeting of state succession commissions on December 18.

The governor of the Macedonian National Bank denied that Macedonia was stalling an agreement adding that a month more should not be a problem given that other countries had waited for Yugoslavia all previous years.

Given the unexpected halt, Dinkic said Yugoslavia would contact the Basel bank and request membership and right to draw a loan, as had been already done by other countries. The Yugoslav central bank accepts the model advocated by Croatia and Slovenia as well as the model requested by Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia because it believes that reaching an agreement soon is more important than the value a country would lose or gain.

Dinkic today explained the issue of the gold Serbia had contributed to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, dismissing the widely-held opinion that the gold in Basel was actually the Serbian gold to which the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had the exclusive right. Dinkic said the gold was in Basel and was mostly spent but Yugoslavia would address that question at other succession meetings