By Alix Kroeger BBC Belgrade Correspondent

The Croatian foreign minister is in Belgrade for talks with his Yugoslav counterpart, the first such visit since Croatia broke away from Yugoslavia 10 years ago.

Croatian foreign minister Tonino Picula will meet the president and foreign minister of Yugoslavia on Tuesday.

He will then travel to northern Serbia for meetings with the Croat minority there.

Picula will visit the Croat minority in northern Serbia

The Prevlaka Peninsula on the extreme southern border between Croatia and Yugoslavia is home to the world's smallest peace keeping mission.

For nearly 10 years UN observers have monitored the disputed area, a legacy of Croatia's succession from Yugoslavia in 1991 and the war that followed.

On Tuesday in Belgrade their dispute will move one step closer to resolution with the signing of an agreement between the Croatian minister and his Yugoslav counterpart Goran Svilanovic.

Their talks will cover several issues, among them trade liberalisation, refugee returns and the fate of missing persons from the war which broke out in the early 1990s.

'Normalisation'

Thousands of Croatian Serbs are living in Yugoslavia as refugees.

In some cases they have been tried and convicted of war crimes in absentia and are liable to face arrest if they try to enter Croatia.

Others have returned, only to find their properties illegally occupied, usually by Croats, some of them refugees themselves from the war in neighbouring Bosnia.

Speaking in a television interview at the weekend Mr Picula said relations between Zagreb and Belgrade were entering a period of normalisation.

Although problems remained, he said, they would be addressed and resolved with the minimum of political pressure.