Bush told me, “We are waiting for you in NATO”

Croatian President Stjepan Mesić stated on Wednesday that he received a new confirmation from U.S. President George W. Bush regarding Croatia’s imminent entry into NATO.

President Mesić met with Bush at a formal dinner hosted by the American president for heads of state and government gathered at the 62nd session of the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday evening, local time.

“He told me: we are waiting for you in the NATO pact. He waited for my response. I told him: yes, we are ready. And then he showed me… alright,” said Mesić, demonstrating the gesture Bush made by raising his thumb. He added that he reminded the American president of his promise to come to Croatia and even spend part of his vacation there, to which Bush, according to him, said that “it is not over yet.” “It can still be realized,” added the Croatian president in a conversation with Croatian journalists in New York. Bush has 15 months left in his second presidential term, and Croatian diplomatic sources indicate that significant efforts are being made to arrange his official visit to Croatia during that period.

Speaking about his meeting with former U.S. President Bill Clinton at the opening of the annual meeting of Clinton’s Global Initiative, Mesić said that Clinton is interested in Croatia’s progress and that he “spoke positively” about the direction in which Croatia and the region are heading. The Croatian president also discussed Clinton’s initiative, which gathers numerous supporters and financiers through concrete projects to assist the poorest countries, and is recording results.

Regarding his meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mesić stated that there was no reason to refuse the Iranian side’s request for a meeting, but that he clearly expressed his opinion on the unacceptability of Holocaust denial as the greatest crime in history and the right to the existence of the state of Israel, a UN member state, which the Iranian president repeatedly asserts. He noted that Ahmadinejad partially refuted the interpretation of his statements during the meeting, but that “they did not further develop those theses.”

In response to a journalist’s request to comment on the SDP’s attacks on the HDZ for abusing the diaspora for electoral purposes, due to instructions for ambassadors and consuls, Mesić said that Croatian “diplomatic representations need to do everything necessary for the elections, and agitation should be left to those concerned, which does not involve the administration.”

Regarding yesterday’s Greek protest over the use of the name Macedonia at the UN General Assembly, which was provoked by the assembly president, Macedonian diplomat Srđan Kerim, Mesić said that it has become customary to refer to representatives of Macedonia at many international forums and that he believes this is a “practice that will need to be resolved by a formal UN decision ‘sooner or later.'”

On Wednesday in New York, Mesić continued with intensive bilateral meetings, aimed, among other things, at securing as broad support for Croatia as possible ahead of the upcoming decision on its candidacy for a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council.

He met with the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who accepted the invitation to visit Croatia and expressed Qatar’s intention to invest in Croatia, with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, with whom he discussed the situation in their war-torn and conflict-affected countries, and also met with the presidents of Rwanda and Ethiopia.

President Mesić will deliver a speech at the UN General Assembly on Thursday. (H)