Zagreb - Croatia's President Franjo Tudjman (77) was last night fighting for his life after complications following an operation earlier in the week, Chris Stephenwrites.
The hardline nationalist leader was described as having internal bleeding following surgery to mend a rupture in his large intestine. Some parliamentary sources suggested last night he might in fact be already dead.
His sickness meant a delay in the formal dissolution of the lower house of parliament, which he had been due to carry out in advance of elections next month.
Tudjman is a former communist who became a nationalist. In 1991 he led Croatia to form its own breakaway state, fighting a bloody war with Yugoslavia. But he lost international support after backing Bosnian Croats in the carving out of their own ethnically-pure state in the following year.
Opposition politicians, now ahead of Tudjman's ruling HDZ party in opinion polls, say the government used a recent mass privatisation of state assets to make themselves rich at the country's expense. Tudjman is also under fire at home for continued support for Bosnia's Croats, pouring state funds into supporting them and allowing them to vote, and have their own MPs, in Croatian elections.