"You can't build anything without first knowing who owns what," Bosnian Communications and Transport Minister Damir Hadzic told Reuters.
With over 1,000 islands and 10 million tourists visiting every year, and keen to resolve the issue and clinch EU funds for the bridge, Croatia has signaled it will agree to Bosnia's demand.
But Zagreb faces resistance from Dubrovnik.
"Those two islands belonged to the Dubrovnik Republic (Ragusa)," Dobroslavic, the county prefect, told Reuters. "It didn't give them to the Ottoman Empire, that's for sure."
Croatia's foreign minister, Vesna Pusic, dismissed such arguments.
"It is an issue that can and will be resolved," Pusic told Reuters.
"I think the bridge is the better and more rational solution, on condition we get money for its construction from the EU's structural funds. Croatia does not have that kind of money in its budget."
ISOLATED
The EU will press for progress at talks with Croatian and Bosnian leaders in Brussels this month.
It is also looking for a deal between Croatia and its northern neighbor Slovenia, currently the only ex-Yugoslav republic in the EU. Slovenia is threatening to block Croatia's accession in a row over money owed to Croatian depositors when a Slovenian bank went bankrupt during the 1991 breakup of Yugoslavia.
Meanwhile, the Bosnian town of Neum is growing anxious.
Mayor Zivko Matusko, his office adorned with Croatian flags, said Neum had nothing to lose by Croatia's entry into the EU and eventually the visa-free Schengen zone.
But residents are concerned the bridge will effectively deprive the town of vital through-traffic.
"It can't be in Neum's interest for people to go around it," said Ivan Kuzman, 47, owner of the Kuzman hotel and supermarket in Neum.
Ironically, most of the town's 3,500 residents are Croats, one of the three ethnic groups that fought in Bosnia's 1991-95 war.
Many Bosnian Croats look to Croatia as their true homeland, a fact reflected in the failure to upgrade the winding, one-lane road that links Neum to the Bosnian interior.
Bosnia's development is still hostage to ethnic feuding over power and the past, leaving it languishing behind Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia and Albania in the queue to join the EU.
Sarajevo has failed even to create a state-level agriculture ministry, meaning Bosnian dairy farmers will lose their main export market in Croatia as of next year.
A short drive up the coast from Neum, inside Croatia, a crane stands idle on the banks where Croatia's previous government began building the bridge, only to abort the project as funds dried up during the global crisis.
It got no further than a couple of supporting pillars.
Without the bridge, "Dubrovnik would have the status of an island," said Kapetanic, the historian. "It's not a problem for me or you to go by car, but not chickens and eggs."
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