Luxembourg - Slovenia resisted European Union pressure on Monday to give immediate backing to a plan aimed at easing Croatia's EU membership path, officials at a meeting of EU foreign ministers said.

Slovenia has been blocking Croatia's EU bid in a row over the two neighbours' maritime border.

Last week EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn proposed a compromise which would see the two countries nominate five judges tasked with solving the problem. Croatia and many EU member states welcomed the proposal.

EU foreign ministers gathered on Monday in Luxembourg to put pressure on both sides to agree to the compromise, according to Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, who chaired the meeting.

"It depends on the two of them. We had a talk together, they know the conditions, they have to accept the mediation offer, if they do then there will be progress," he said as he arrived.

"There is pressure on both of them, there won't be on one side alone," he said.

But Slovenia's foreign minister, Samuel Zbogar, said that his country would have to make an in-depth analysis of the proposal before it was ready to comment on it, according to diplomats close to the negotiations.

He also pointed out that Monday is the day on which Slovenia celebrates the beginning of its resistance, as part of the then Yugoslavia, to Nazi occupation in 1941. (dpa)