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June 21, 1999
Web posted at: 9:14 a.m. EDT (1314 GMT)

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (CNN) -- President Bill Clinton arrived in Slovenia on Monday for a visit during which he intended to hail the former Yugoslav republic as a model for the Balkan region following the Kosovo conflict.

Clinton, accompanied by his wife Hillary and daughter Chelsea, was the first U.S. president to visit the country, which broke with the Yugoslav government of Slobodan Milosevic in 1991.

"I want the American people and the rest of the world to see a success story in southeastern Europe," Clinton said before flying from Bonn to Ljubljana, where he landed on a grey, rainy day.

After visiting the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana he is due to visit an ethnic Albanian refugee camp in Macedonia on Tuesday.

In a public address in Ljubljana and official meetings at the parliament building, Clinton planned to congratulate Slovenia for breaking with Milosevic's government and establishing stability in a region riven by ethnic tensions.

"There is no future in Europe for Mr. Milosevic and his policy of manipulating normal human differences for inhuman ends," Clinton declared Sunday in Germany, where he attended a summit with European Union leaders Monday before departing for Ljubljana.

President Milan Kucan said Clinton's visit "marks the recognition of our young country, that in its eight years of existence has managed to change its profile, become politically stable, economically successful and socially secure."

A planned dinner with the democratically elected Kucan at Brdo Castle, former residence of the late dictator Josip Broz Tito, would dramatize that change.

Slovenia is a country of 2 million people, smaller than New Jersey and squeezed between Austria and Croatia. It won independence in 1991 and now wants to join NATO.

Slovenia was the most developed of the Yugoslav republics when it won independence in 1991 and has capitalized on that advantage since. With key industries including pharmaceuticals and electronics, Slovenia has a per capita income of $11,000, similar to Portugal and Greece.

Although Slovenia is a member of NATO's Partnership for Peace, which prepares candidate countries to join the alliance, and an associate member of the European Union, many Slovenes were disappointed to miss the first wave of NATO expansion, which was limited this year to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

U.S. officials clearly held out hope for Slovenia's NATO aspirations. "We fully plan to have a second wave of enlargement," said White House spokesman Mike Hammer. "Slovenia is definitely on that track."

Slovenes also are frustrated by how little the world knows about their country, and hope Clinton's visit can change that.

"Americans, and the whole world, will know now where Slovenia is," said Marko Macur, a 22-year-old student waiting earlier this week for a ticket to see Clinton in Congress Square.

Slovenia made fevered preparations for Clinton, including $1.5 million for new wiring, plumbing and curtains at the castle outside Ljubljana, where Clinton will have a dinner for about 120 people.

Clinton also is meeting Milo Djukanovic, the president of Montenegro, the smaller of the two remaining Yugoslav republics.

The pro-Western Djukanovic has opposed Milosevic's policies, and Sandy Berger, the president's national security adviser, said Clinton's meeting with the Montenegrin leader will "demonstrate our support for the steadfastness that he has shown."

Twelve days after the last NATO bombing raid on Yugoslavia, Clinton was also venturing near the front lines of the battle -- won by the United States and its allies -- to stop Milosevic's ethnic cleansing of Kosovo.

Before heading back to Washington on Tuesday, the president was visiting the Stenkovich I refugee camp, temporary home to thousands of Kosovar Albanians who fled their homes in terror of Milosevic's Serb troops.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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