Croatia News - CroatiaPress.com

Zagreb, February 23 (CP) – Croatian President Stjepan Mesic paid tribute to former Slovene president Janez Drnovsek who died overnight at his home some 20 kilometres from the capital Ljubljana.

Expressing his condolences to the current Slovene president Danilo Tuerk, Mesic described the late Drnovsek as a politician whose legacy has been the relatively easy transition of Slovenia from being a part of Yugoslavia to becoming an independent state at the start of the 1990’s.

Mesic said Drnovsek was always putting a great effort into maintaining and building good neighbourly relations with Croatia and said he had not only lost a colleague, but also a friend, as the two grew close in the days of the break-up of Yugoslavia, when they were both members of its presidency and tried to stop the war from igniting.

Drnovsek became Slovenia’s president from 2002, but did not seek a new five-year term in office in 2007, due to his ill health.

In 2005 he turned to holistic medicine after being diagnosed with kidney tumour in 1999, saying regular medicine could not help him.