President Zoran Milanovic and Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic are embarking on negotiations on ambassadorial appointments this week, Jutarnji List daily said on Monday, adding that the government finds unacceptable the model under which the president would appoint 50% of diplomats.

Due to a row between Milanovic and Plenkovic, 70 percent of the posts in Croatia’s diplomacy are vacant or the terms of ambassadors, consuls, and consuls-general have expired.

Two years since the last talks between them on this important issue, it seems the first serious negotiations could in fact take place.

Last week, Milanovic repeated his invitation to Plenkovic that consultations and talks on appointments of diplomats should resume.

Although the government is cautious, it seems the negotiations could resume as early as this week in light of the more relaxed relations between the President’s Office and the government since agreement was reached on appointments in the Military Security and Intelligence Agency and the army.

The last time Foreign Minister Gordan Grlic-Radman and Milanovic’s then-foreign policy advisor Orsat Miljenic talked was on 27 August 2021, when the government would not agree to the model under which half the ambassadors would be nominated by the president and half by the government, and the government found some candidates unacceptable.

Since then, the terms of 60 ambassadors or consuls have expired, or 70% of all diplomatic posts. The government  has welcomed, albeit cautiously, Milanovic’s “friendly” gesture of last week, so talks on diplomacy could begin this week on the principle of recent negotiations on military appointments.

That means the talks will not be between Milanovic and Plenkovic but their envoys, Jutarnji List said, adding that it would make sense for the talks to be between Grlic-Radman and the president’s foreign policy advisor Neven Pelicaric.