Croatian President Ivo Josipovic has been in Qatar since Sunday on an official visit, and opened the county’s first embassy in the Gulf here earlier this week.

Traveling with his foreign minister, first deputy prime minister and some 40 Croatian businessmen, Josipovic met the Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and Qatari ministers at the Emiri Diwan yesterday with a focus on expanding economic ties between the two countries.

One of the issues on the table is the possibility of Qatar buying military hardware from Croatia, which could include armored fighting vehicles and other heavy equipment, Bloomberg reports, citing Croatian newspaper Poslovni Dnevrik.

This would follow on numerous military hardware purchases Qatar has made in the last year.

Poslovni Dnevrik also reports that Qatar and Croatia are in process of agreeing on a 25-year natural gas supply deal, which would see a Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) terminal built in Croatia. That deal could reportedly be finalized in a trip to Croatia by the Emir next spring.

The Croatian president, meanwhile, was also in attendance at the opening ceremony of the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) this morning, Qatar News Agency reports.

Credit: Photo of Croatian President Ivo Jasipovic by Roberta F. and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.