The adoption of the declaration was initiated by Andrija Hebrang of the Croatian Democratic Union and independent deputy Slaven Letica.
The original idea to declare Storm Operation an international ally anti-terrorist operation was scrapped during the negotiations about the text of the declaration
The draft declaration, which Hebrang and Letica showed to parliamentary parties earlier this week, said that Storm Operation formally gained an international character with the signing of the Split Agreement (Tudjman-Izetbegovic, on 22 July 1995), but that in fact it had an international character even before that. "Representatives of many countries took part in the intelligence, strategic, operational and diplomatic preparation and realisation of Storm Operation, and the Croatian people own a special gratitude to the Bill Clinton Administration and NATO forces which played the crucial role in the final breaking of the greater Serbian aggression," the original version of the document said.
Another HDZ deputy, Kresimir Cosic, who took part in the preparations for Operation Storm as an assistant to the then Defence Minister Gojko Susak, criticised this version of the declaration. Cosic said in parliament on Thursday that declaring the United States a participant in Operation Storm was bending the truth about security and political circumstances of that time.
Hebrang on Thursday gathered 60 signatures of parliamentary deputies necessary to include the draft declaration in parliamentary procedure, by the parliamentary presidency decided today that parliament said enough about Storm Operation in the Homeland War Declaration.