The dispute was overcome after the foreign ministers of Slovenia and Serbia Karl Erjavec and Ivan Mrkić signed a letter of intent on solving the issue at a joint session of the two governments in Belgrade on 2 October.

The residence was taken over by a special commission headed by Foreign Ministry Secretary General Tomaž Kunstelj, which together with the commission of Serbia set down the final border between the land of the residence and another building, which remains in the hands of Serbia, closing an important succession issue between the two countries.

The agreement of the two ministers was to divide the land in a way that will allow functionality and independence of both buildings, located in a park in one of the most elite locations in the Italian capital.

Former Slovenian diplomat Miran Mejak told today's edition of the daily Dnevnik that the value of the land was not explicitly set down when the embassies were distributed because it would take too long to appraise.

"We said it was logical that the land comes along with the buildings," he said, noting that the issue of land ownership was only a problem in Rome, because "the land there is very valuable".

This was the last of the 45 diplomatic and consular buildings of ex-Yugoslavia in OECD countries that were assigned to Slovenia in 2006.

As part of this, Slovenia has already come into possession of the embassy in Washington, a consulate in Milan and a consulate in Klagenfurt, which it has been using since its independence.

Slovenia's high representative for succession Rudi Gabrovec explained for the STA that the successors to former Yugoslavia have so far agreed on the distribution of some 80 diplomatic and consular representations and still have some 50 to distribute.

Taking into account the agreed 16% share, Slovenia should get five to seven more buildings.

However, Serbia still has to disclose the representations that were not detailed in the 2001 succession treaty, although Belgrade has committed in 2009 to reveal the list of remaining military representations, flats and land abroad owned by the former common state.