PRESIDENT TUDJMAN ADRESSES CROATIAN PEOPLE

ZAGREB, Nov 6 (Hina) - Croatian President Franjo Tudjman on Wednesday addressed the Croatian people on occasion of Croatia's accession into the Council of Europe. The following is the President's message in full: Croats in the Homeland and in Emigration, Citizens of Croatia, Today Croatia has finally been admitted to the Council of Europe. For independent and sovereign Croatia this is an event of great importance considering the circumstances prevailing within the present-day international order. On the road to this first, formal step towards European integrations we have also had to overcome many objective difficulties, but also deliberate aversion. In addition to the lack of understanding, we have also been faced with attempts at direct interference in the internal development of democratic Croatia, so as to affect its international position as well. In spite of all the extremely unfavourable and very complex circumstances on the way to the establishment, defence and international assertion of sovereign Croatia, we have achieved success, because we have appreciated not only the essential experience of overall history, but also correctly assessed the given international relations with all their common and contrasted goals and interests. In our time the Croatian people has mustered amazing stamina and maturity with which it has alone, by virtue of its own strength - only with God's help - won its place in the international order, and, now, in the Council of Europe. This has been possible because the Croatian national being has sustained the awareness of the lasting values of its political and cultural heritage, from the medieval national rulers to the contributions of its great men of spirit to European and global civilization. In the past as well as today this awareness has overpowered all the disintegrative and disoriented constituents which, together with external impacts, threatened the survival not only of the State but also of the Nation. We have been capable of achieving today's Croatia by surviving strife, and life-and-death struggle, against Venetian, Ottoman, German, Hungarian, Nazi-fascist and Greater Serbian imperialism. But we have also had to overcome our own dangerous weaknesses: the blind discouragements and the self-destructive illusions. The historic success we have so far been able to achieve in realizing and assuring the international position of the independent, democratic and sovereign Croatian State, is the result of a well-thought-out, judicious and determined policy in the achievement and defence of the goals and interests of the Nation and of the state within the given international circumstances. Even in exceptional, war-time conditions we have established in a most democratic way a stable constitutional and juridical democratic system which has successfully withstood all the internal and external attempts at destabilisation posing the threat of a return to the old state of affairs or of uncertainty. We have built, out of nothing, the Croatian Armed Forces which, at first with the unarmed people, defended Croatia's Freedom and then, having equipped themselves, inflicted such defeats on the Yugocommunist and Greater Serbian aggressor that Croatia has become - within the changed strategic relations - a prime factor in this part of Europe. By transforming the socialist system into a free market system, by introducing and sustaining a stable national currency, and though overall economic stability Croatia has laid the preconditions for the faster economic end cultural development. In the implementation of its reconstruction, Croatia is already a vast construction site and, in the assessment of the most competent international financial institution it has created the preconditions for becoming one of the most prosperous countries. The Croatian State leadership and the Croatian public welcome the admission of Croatia to the Council of Europe as a positive fact and as a precondition for better mutual understanding, mutual commitment and economic linking. However, at the same time Croatia makes it known that it resolutely opposes all designs which would force it into regional Balkan or Southeast-European integrations, for reasons which - we are convinced - are based alike on Croatian and international strategic interests. In terms of its geopolitical position and of all its history fourteen centuries long, Croatia belongs to the cultural and civilizational sphere of Central Europe and of the Mediterranean. The political link with the Balkans was only a brief episode in the history of Croatia, only seven decades long, which did not reduce but only enhanced the civilizational contrasts. Therefore, Croatia cannot accept integration based on such designs because they would actually annul everything Croatia has achieved, at the cost of huge sacrifices and victims, on the way to the establishment of its Freedom, Democracy and Sovereignty. This would thwart the return of Croatia into the sphere to which it belongs in geographical, historical and cultural terms; indeed, for Croatia this would also mean the imposition of a political-diplomatic defeat equal to the military one at Bleiburg. Croatia is determined to avoid new calvaries in the region from which it has delivered itself. Nevertheless, Croatia is not evading its responsibility in the establishment of lasting peace and a new international order in this part of Europe. At the same time, Croatia reminds, and bears witness to, that the tragic crisis in the region is not based merely on the contrasts between the would-be depraved nationalisms, but on an extremely intricate reality conditioned by the totality of events since ancient times to the very present day. We would therefore like to draw the attention of both European and global factors to the fact that one cannot irresponsibly and with impunity ignore certain irrefutable historical facts as well as the unfortunate present-day reality. This is the region where the Roman Empire split into the Western, Roman Empire and the Eastern, Byzantine Empire; where Christianity split into Western, Catholic and Eastern, Orthodox church; where Yugoslavia, created by the will of the powers at Versailles, could not be sustained by either monarchist-fascist or communist dictatorship, or by attempts at its democratic transformation. The neglect of all these stubborn facts, and the imposition of untenable regional frameworks, could lead to new tragic events - not only in the more distant but also in the nearer future. It should also be appreciated that the democratic national movements were the main inner force in breaking down the communist system and Stalinist imperialism. Similarly, one should also be aware of the fact that multinational socialist Yugoslavia and the indeed multinational Soviet Union were not the only countries to disintegrate in our time; so did democratic Czechoslovakia. In accepting the admission to the Council of Europe with hope, just like other European nations, Croatia calls for the necessity of reason, indeed of historical wisdom in the implementation of European integration. Having already achieved partnership relations with the United States of America, and friendly and good relations with many European countries, as well as with Russia and China, Croatia looks forward to its integration, as soon as possible, in the European Union, and full integration in the Euro-Atlantic security system. If further efforts are made to impose a certain type of regional association, then the place of Croatia is with Central European countries from the Baltic to the Adriatic and, even more specifically, together with the Adriatic-Danubian countries to which Croatia belongs in the closest terms. Sovereign and democratic Croatia has already demonstrated that it wishes to be, and can be, a constructive factor, and a safe support, in the building of peace and of a new, stable international order in this part of the world. Dear fellow countrymen, Dear citizens of Croatia, The future of Croatia is in our own hands! Let us not permit any repetition of the fatal mistakes of the past! Let us build on the foundations provided by the magnificent successes and victories achieved in the realization, defence and development of the independent, free and democratic, internationally recognized and sovereign Croatian State! We can and must provide for the progress and economic and cultural prosperity of our Croatian Homeland through the development of our democratic constitutional and legal system, and through the stability and vitality of our economic system! Along these lines we consider the admission of Croatia to the Council of Europe to be appropriate, as the inception of formal integration, in the interest of both our Homeland and of the entire European community. 062035 MET nov 96