PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE

Thursday, October 18, 2001

CROATIA IS SEEKING TO WESTERNIZE MORE

By Jack Kelly

Post-Gazette National Affairs Writer

Croatia is shedding the ardent nationalism of the war-torn 1990s and moving rapidly to integrate economically and politically with Europe and the United States, according to freshmen diplomat Ivan Grdesic, Croatia's ambassador to the United States.

Grdesic, who until last year was teaching political science at the University of Zagreb, was in Pittsburgh yesterday in search of American partners for Croatian businesses, to visit with Pittsburgh's large Croatian-American community, and to take part in a panel discussion on European integration sponsored by the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh.

This was Grdesic's second visit to Pittsburgh in his short diplomatic career because there are more Americans of Croatian descent in Pittsburgh, about 300.000, than in any other US city.

A former Yugoslav republic about the size of West Virginia, Croatia declared its independence in 1991 but did not obtain it until after four years of war against occupying Serbian forces. Last year, a coalition of six moderate parties ousted the nationalists who ruled Croatia since 1991, running on a platform calling for economic integration and political cooperation with Europe and the United States.

The new Croatian government's top foreign policy goals are to join NATO and to keep the United States involved in the Balkans, Grdesic said.

"This is what we want from the United States - keep the door to NATO open", he said.

Grdesic presented his credentials to President Bush on Valentine's Day, a date that he said had symbolic value in presaging the warm new relationship that is burgeoning between the two countries.

"He said I was his first ambassador. He was my first president," Grdesic said.

The chief domestic challenge facing the new government is privatizing an economy still dominated by inefficient state enterprises, a left-over of a half-century of communist rule.

Privatization is necessary to make Croatian industries competitive, Grdesic said, but has the short-term consequence of increasing unemployment, currently 22 percent.

Lawrence Rossin, the US ambassador to Croatia, who accompanied Grdesic on his trip to Pittsburgh, said US-sponsored polls indicate at least 60 percent of Croatians support the new government, even though they think it is doing a poor job of combating unemployment.

"The people are reasonable enough to know that we should not go back," Grdesic said.

The government got a boost when the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague, Netherlands, amended its indictment against former Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic to include crimes committed against Croats.

"This got a very positive reaction from the people," Grdesic said. "They see justice being done."

He said he thought there was little likelihood that violence would flare anew in Bosnia or Croatia, but that it was important that international peacekeepers, Americans among them, remain in the region.

"Their presence is the credibility of the commitment," he said. "If you don't have American GIs there…"

Croatia wants to help in the war on terror, Grdesic said, and is sharing with the United States all the intelligence it has on Bosnian Muslims who may have links to Osama bin Laden. Croatia also has asked the United States and the European Union for help in monitoring its border with Bosnia to keep extremists from crossing into Western Europe from Croatia.

In Pittsburgh, Grdesic and Rossin met with five firms in the environmental cleanup business, looking for partners for Croatian businesses.

"I won't say we closed any deals, but we got some nibbles", Rossin said.

The industry most ripe for privatization, Grdesic and Rossin said, is tourism. The Dalmatian coast has been a mecca for Central European tourists for many years, but the tourist season is too short, only two months long, and there aren't enough hotel rooms to accommodate all who wish to come to Croatia during the season.

The tourism industry also suffers from the unenterprising mentality left over from the communist era, Rossin said. A US aircraft carrier made a port call in May, only a week before the customary start of the tourist season, he said, but only a handful of restaurants were open.

"You had 5,000 sailors with money to spend, but no place to spend it," he said.