Gojko Šušak Politician
Gojko Šušak (pronounced [gȏːjko ʃûʃak]; 16 March 1945 – 3 May 1998) was a Croatian politician who held the post of defence minister from 1991 to 1998. A Bosnian Croat emigrant who had moved from Yugoslavia to Canada in 1969, Šušak rose to prominence among the Croat diaspora in North America in the following decades, eventually becoming a close friend and associate to Franjo Tuđman, leader of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), a nationalist party seeking Croatia's independence from Yugoslavia. Following the adoption of multi-party democracy in 1990, Šušak returned to the country, and after Tuđman became President of Croatia in 1991, Šušak was appointed defence minister, an office he held throughout the Yugoslav Wars. He played a crucial role in Croatia's involvement in the Bosnian War, supporting the self-proclaimed Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia statelet in the 1992–95 Croat–Bosniak War, and later helped broker the 1995 Dayton Agreement. During his term in office he forged close contacts with the United States.
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Office holder
| military operations | |
|---|---|
| military branch | |
| military command | Croatian Defence Minister |
| military rank | |
| office | Minister of Defence of Croatia |
| party | |
| prime minister | |
| service end | 1998 |
| service start | 1998 |
| successor |