Croatia will be unable to achieve its goal of completing EU accession talks next year unless tensions over an old border row with EU member Slovenia ease in the next week, a political analyst said yesterday.

Zagreb hopes to open 10 more negotiating 'chapters' with Brussels and close five next Friday. This requires the approval of all 27 member states and is vital for the success of its plan to wind up the EU talks by the end of 2009.

Slovenia, saying that documents and maps among the papers Croatia submitted to the European Commission were prejudicial in the territorial dispute, has threatened to allow Zagreb to open and close only a few chapters.

"Unless Croatia opens the 10 chapters in December, it is abosolutely clear that it cannot close all of them and complete the talks in 2009," said political analyst Zeljko Trkanjec.

The two former Yugoslav republics have been unable to agree on a sliver of land and Adriatic sea border since they jointly proclaimed independence from Socialist Yugoslavia in 1991. Slovenia joined the EU and Nato in 2004.

France, keen to push Croatia forward during its current EU presidency, has proposed a compromise whereby Zagreb would sign a document saying it was in no way trying to enforce any border solution in its EU talks.