A republic of the northwestern Balkans, Croatia is an elongated crescent-shaped country to the north, west, and southwest of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its extensive Adriatic coastal region on the southwest includes nearly 1,200 islands and islets. Area: 56,538 sq km (21,829 sq mi). Pop. (1994 est.) 4,788,000. Cap.: Zagreb. Monetary unit: Kuna (introduced May 30) with (Oct. 7, 1994) a free rate of 5.68 kune to U.S. $1 (9.04 kune=£ 1 sterling). President in 1994, Franjo Tudjman; prime minister, Nikica Valentic.
In 1994 Croatia achieved an improvement in its international position as well as a measure of stability in its economy. Pope John Paul II’s visit to Croatia on September 10-11 raised the country’s international profile. It was under strong prompting from the Vatican and the United States that Croatia had agreed at the beginning of the year to underwrite the Croat-Muslim agreement signed in Washington, D.C., on March 1 that ended the fighting between the local Croats and the Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina and established a Croat-Muslim federation there.
In November Croatia and the United States signed a military-cooperation agreement. The U.S. also played a part in brokering a cease-fire on March 30 that ended several days’ fighting between the Croat forces and those of a Serb-occupied region south of Zagreb. Lengthy talks between the rebel Serbs and the Zagreb government, sponsored by the U.S., Russia, and the European Union, led to an agreement on November 21 providing for the reopening of the Zagreb-Belgrade highway and the Adria pipeline and for the supply of water and electricity to Serbs in rebel-held territory. The attack by Croatian Serbs on Bihac in northwestern Bosnia and its spirited defense by Bosnian government troops caused new Croat-Serb tensions. The Croats responded by sending regular army units to help the Bosnian government forces in northwestern Bosnia. Relations with the government of rump Yugoslavia had been upgraded by the setting up of diplomatic missions in the spring, but full Croatian-Yugoslav mutual diplomatic recognition failed to materialize.
Opposition to Pres. Franjo Tudjman’s authoritarian style and his Bosnia policy before the Washington agreement led to a split in the ruling Croatian Democratic Union and the creation of a moderate Independent Democrat Party led by Stipe Mesic and Josip Manolic, the respective chairmen of the lower and upper houses of the Croatian parliament. Subsequent protests against abuse of parliamentary procedure by the opposition parties led to a walkout lasting several months.
A visit to Zagreb by the German foreign minister, Klaus Kinkel, in October paved the way for the inclusion of Croatia in the European Union’s technical and scientific aid program known as PHARE. In the wake of joint visits by Prime Minister Nikica Valentic and his Bosnian counterpart, Haris Silajdzic, to Malaysia, Pakistan, and Iran, Croatia obtained a $220 million order from Iran in October to build eight 22,000-ton ships in three years.
The Valentic government’s economic-stabilization program, which had begun in 1993, remained on course. Croatia reported zero inflation in 1994. The Croatian national bank’s gold and foreign-exchange reserves stood at $1,370,000 in November 1994. The number of foreign tourists increased by 55% in the first nine months of 1994 compared with the same period in 1993, but progress toward privatization continued to be slow. Industrial production fell by 9% in the first half of 1994, and the population’s purchasing power dropped by 25% in that period. The unemployment rate stood at 20% during the year, which precipitated a steady increase in emigration by university graduates and skilled workers. In the first nine months of 1994, over 70,000 blue-collar workers emigrated to the West. The new currency, the kuna (initially valued at about $0.17), was introduced on May 30 amid some protests because this had been the name of Croatia’s currency under the fascist Ustashi government in 1941-45.
This updates the article Croatia, history of.