Mesic arrived in San Francisco on Saturday and met Croatian emigrants at the Croatian-American Culture Centre, briefing them on Croatia's efforts to strengthen democracy and the economy and on its road to the European Union.
"There is not one issue in which we would diverge in the global sense," Mesic told Croatian reporters after the meeting, speaking of Croatia-US relations.
"There are some issues on which our views are somewhat different than than of the American administration, but essentially we cooperate well both bilaterally and multilaterally," said Mesic.
The US indicates that Croatia might be invited to join NATO at the 2008 enlargement summit if it met the accession criteria by then.
Mesic said Croatia had "completed the reform of the army" and that now it was "structurally within NATO standards". He added that Croatia's armed forces lacked the weapons and equipment which NATO countries had but said that this was a financial issue which "must and can be settled in a short time period".
Mesic also met a dozen Californian business people of Croatian origin for talks on possibilities of expanding economic cooperation with Croatia.
He said Croatian companies and companies of American Croats should become acquainted and see what the concrete possibilities of cooperation were. He added they would be helped in that by Nadan Vidosevic, the president of the Croatian Chamber of the Economy, who is accompanying Mesic.
"Croatia must activate its potentials but it cannot do this without partners. And the best partners are our Croats from the diaspora," said Mesic.
In San Francisco, the president also visited the Slavonian-Illyrian Mutual Charitable Society, the oldest Croat association in North America set up in 1857. The Society has about 600 members.
There are about 250,000 American Croats in California, including about 50,000 in the wider San Francisco area, according to Society vice president Adam Eterovich, who studied the settling of Croats on the American West Coast. The majority of them, six generations already, are assimilated and only know that one of their ancestors had arrived from Croatia, he told the press.