Factfile on Croatia

ZAGREB, January 8, 2010 (AFP) - Croatians go the polls on Sunday to elect their third president since the country proclaimed independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991.

- GEOGRAPHY: Croatia borders Slovenia, Hungary, Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia-Hercegovina and has a maritime border with Italy. It has a long coastline on the Adriatic with 1,185 islands, mountains in the interior and flat plains in the northeast. It covers 56,542 square kilometres (22,617 square miles) of land.

- POPULATION: According to the 2001 census the population was 4,437,460 million. Minorities make up 7.47 percent of the population, Serbs accounting for 4.54 percent.

- CAPITAL: Zagreb.

- LANGUAGE: Croatian.

- RELIGION: 89.63 percent of the population are Roman Catholics.

- HISTORY: Croatia proclaimed independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991, after which a war broke out with rebel Serbs backed by the former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), who captured almost one third of the country's territory.

Most of this area was recaptured in 1995 by the Croatian army, with the exception of eastern Slavonia, bordering Serbia, which was put under the temporary administration of a UN force. The area was peacefully reintegrated into Croatia in 1998.

Following independence, Croatia was ruled for almost a decade by nationalist leader Franjo Tudjman's Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). Tudjman died in December 1999 and a month later a centre-left coalition inflicted a crushing defeat to his HDZ.

The moderates' election triumph was a milestone for Croatia after Tudjman's authoritarian policies isolated it worldwide and devastated the economy already hard-hit by the war.

The country's democratic landscape was completed in February 2000 when Stipe Mesic, a centrist, was elected as Tudjman's successor.

Since January 2000, the country has been put on a fast track to Europe, while Mesic was re-elected for his second five-year term in 2005.

After victory in November 2003 elections, conservative Prime Minister Ivo Sanader transformed the HDZ into a modern pro-European party. During his rule the country opened EU membership talks in 2005, and hopes to join the bloc by January 2012. Sanader, whose party won the 2007 elections, unexpectedly stepped down in July without providing clear explanation for the move. He was succeeded by his deputy Jadranka Kosor, the country's first woman prime minister.

- ARMED FORCES: Zagreb joined NATO in April 2009. Its armed forces number 25,000 personnel. Obligatory military service is abolished since 2008.

- POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS: Parliamentary democracy since 2000.

- ECONOMY AND RESOURCES:

- CURRENCY: kuna (HRK)

- GDP: 10.682 euros per capita (2008)

- UNEMPLOYMENT: 16.1 percent (November 2009)

- GROWTH: 2.4 percent (2008), forecasts of between minus 5.0 and minus 6.0 percent for 2009

- INFLATION: 6.1 percent (2008)

- EXTERNAL DEBT: 42.8 billion euros (61.3 billion dollars) or 93.9 percent of GDP (September 2009)

- VOTERS: 4,495,006 including some 400,000 abroad