Top judge appointed to calm Slovenia-Croatia dispute scandal

Slovenia said Tuesday it has appointed the president of the International Court of Justice to replace a judge forced to quit over a partiality scandal in a tribunal tasked with solving a border row with Croatia.

French judge Ronny Abraham will replace Jernej Sekolec after a scandal broke last week over tapped phone conversations between the tribunal's Slovenian judge and a Ljubljana official.

In the recordings, the two openly discussed tactics for a ruling favourable to Slovenia. The pair have since resigned.

"With this (appointment of Abraham) we have fulfilled our duty and removed all the obstacles for the tribunal to continue working undisturbed," Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar said Tuesday.

But in a letter to Cerar, Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic repeated a threat to quit the tribunal.

"The credibility and integrity of the overall arbitrary proceedings was marred to the point that Croatia does not believe that the arbitrary process could be continued in this or in a similar form," Milanovic wrote, according to a government statement.

Milanovic meanwhile pledged his country's commitment to "good neighbourhood ties between our countries, allies in NATO and partners in (the) EU, continue to develop despite this incident."

In 2009, the two former Yugoslav republics signed an EU-backed deal to allow the arbitration tribunal to solve a 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 who 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.

Croatia has also appealed to the European Union over the affair.

In Brussels, an EU spokeswoman said Monday that the European Commission fully supported the work of the arbitration panel.

"We are confident that the rules that the two parties have accepted for its functioning will be respected," spokeswoman Mina Andreeva told reporters.

Croatian lawmakers were to meet at an extraordinary session on Wednesday and were expected to make a final decision on whether to withdraw from the proceedings.