ZAGREB ( 2008-04-05 03:08:21 ) :
President George W. Bush arrived in Croatia on Friday after attending a Nato summit where the Balkan country was invited to join the alliance and ahead of talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
Bush, whose plane touched down just after 3:00 pm (1300 GMT) at Zagreb airport, arrived in Croatia a day after the former Yugoslav republic was invited to join Nato.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation invited both Albania and Croatia to join the military alliance at its summit in the Romanian capital Bucharest.
"Both these nations have demonstrated the ability and the willingness to provide strong and enduring contributions to Nato. Both have undertaken challenging political, economic and defence reforms," Bush said after the announcement was made.
The two countries will become the 27th and 28th members of Nato once the accession and ratification process has been finalised, which alliance officials hope can be accomplished within a year.
Later Friday Bush met with President Stipe Mesic and attended a dinner with some 60 of the country's top sports people, artists and politicians.
Meanwhile dozens of protestors gathered in downtown Zagreb carrying banners reading "Nato stinks," "United States of Aggression" and "Bush the bloodthirsty dictator," holding a picture of him next to one of Adolf Hitler.
On Saturday, Bush is to meet Prime Minister Ivo Sanader and make a public speech at a square in central Zagreb, where Croatian activists are planning more anti-Bush rallies.
In his speech on Saturday Bush is expected to praise joining Nato as a guarantee of security and stability in the region "devastated by the war and fanaticism and the ethnic cleansing" of the 1990s, according to the White House.
He is to speak in the presence of leaders of Croatia, Albania and Macedonia, although Nato in Bucharesy decided not to invite Skopje until a long-running dispute with Greece regarding Macedonia's name is solved.
Bush is to stress that those three countries have soldiers in Afghanistan, according to the White House.
From Zagreb, Bush is to leave for the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi where he is to have his last meeting with Putin before the Russian leader steps down as president next month.
Bush is "coming to recognise the hard work that Croatia has done on the path towards receiving this invitation," US ambassador to Croatia Robert Bradtke told journalists earlier this week.
"He is coming to show other countries in southeastern Europe that if they do the hard work carrying out political, economic and defence reforms the door of Nato is also open to them," he said.
Local analysts underline that the United States as the leading Western power wants to boost its position in the volatile Balkans region, which saw a series of bloody wars in the 1990s during the break-up of Yugoslavia.
They point notably to potentially unstable Serbia, strongly backed by Russia. Serbia was enraged when the province of Kosovo proclaimed independence from it in February.
"Using non-political language, one would say the US likes Croatia," read a commentary in the biggest-circulation daily, Vecernji List.
"Using political language, the US has a strategic interest in the Balkans and peace in the region, and in this US goals completely correspond with Croatia's and they would be hard to achieve without (Zagreb)," it stressed.
Croatia's leders define membership of Nato, as well as the European Union, which Zagreb hopes to join by 2010, as its strategic goals.
However, in the past ties between Zagreb and Washington were not always cosy, notably during the rule of the late autocratic president Franjo Tudjman, who died in 1999.
The situation has improved since Mesic came to power in 2000, but major points of friction remain.
They include Croatia's condemnation of the US invasion of Iraq and its refusal to agree immunity for any US citizens sought by the International Criminal Court.
Bush's visit will be the second to Croatia by a US president since the former Yugoslav republic proclaimed independence in 1991.
Bill Clinton made a brief stop in Zagreb in 1996.
