Covic and Vujanovic in Tivat | Photo by www.predsjednik.me.

Montenegrin President Filip Vujanovic on Sunday said Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina will be the first ex-Yugoslav republics to sign a border demarcation agreement.

After meeting the President of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dragan Covic, in the town of Tivat, Vujanovic said the agreement would be signed by the end of August in Vienna.

“The agreement with Montenegro is of special importance for Bosnia and Herzegovina since it will be the first one with one of our neighbours,” Covic said.

Negotiations on 268-km-long border line between the two countries started in 2008.

Vujanovic said that the issue that caused a slight delay in the reaching a border deal between the two countries, the disputed Sutorine area, had now been “archived”.

The dispute erupted in November 2014 when Denis Becirovic, an MP from Bosnia’s opposition Social Democratic Party, SDP, proposed a resolution calling for Bosnia’s parliament to reject the prepared draft border agreement with Montenegro and establish a commission on the Sutorina area.

Some Bosnian officials and intellectuals maintain that the small area was “illegally” grabbed by Montenegro in 1945 – and should have been returned to Bosnia since the subsequent border changes were never ratified.

However, relations between the two neighbours started returning to normal after Bosnia’s parliament rejected a resolution claiming a slice of land around the village.

The agreement will be signed by the two governments in Vienna during a summit of the “Balkan Six Process”, which was launched by Germany last year.

Austria is hosting this year’s meeting which will be devoted to promotion of European integration and regional infrastructure projects.