Stipe Mesic, ex-Yugoslavia's last president, ready to lead Croatia into EUDocument Actions

Croatian President Stipe Mesic, who exit polls said won a second term in Sunday's election runoff, is a political journeyman who rode out the upheavals of the 1990s and now looks set to lead the former Yugoslav republic into the European Union.
Exit polls released after the close of voting gave Mesic a massive lead of more than 40 percent over his rival, Jadranka Kosor of the ruling conservative Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ).
Mesic was first elected president in 2000 after the death of nationalist leader Franjo Tudjman, who ruled Croatia with an iron fist throughout its 1991-95 independence war.
In his latest campaign, the spritely, joke-cracking 70-year-old has played on his image as a "president citizen" who contributed significantly to the country's transition from nationalist autocracy to parliamentary democracy.
With the support of the three main center-left opposition parties, he has claimed credit for ending Croatia's deep international isolation during the Tudjman regime and setting the country on the road to the EU.
EU leaders last month said they would open accession talks with Croatia in March, and the Balkan country is hoping to join the bloc before the end of the decade.
Born in the eastern town of Slavonska Orahovica on December 24, 1934, Mesic graduated in law from Zagreb University.
He started his political career in the 1960s when he was elected to the parliament of Croatia, which was one of the six republics that formed the communist-era Yugoslavia.
Mesic participated in the so-called "Croatian spring," the protest movement against the Serbian dominated Yugoslav regime in the 1970s, for which he served a year in prison and was banned from holding public office.
Later, he represented Croatia in the collective presidency of the former Yugoslavia, a body which he chaired from May to December 1991, when he resigned.
In 1990 during Croatia's transition from socialism to political pluralism, and following its first democratic elections, Mesic became secretary of the HDZ and was Croatia's first prime minister.
He was elected parliamentary speaker in September 1992, but two years later, as the Balkans imploded in vicious inter-ethnic fighting, he left the HDZ in protest against Tudjman's plans to divide neighbouring Bosnia between Croats and Serbs.
As president he has refused to bow to pressure from the United States to support the war in Iraq, and has not signed a deal to exempt US citizens in Croatia from possible extradition to the International Criminal Court.

16/01/2005