Twenty years ago, the army liberated 240 square kilometres and prevented water from spilling from the Peruca reservoir after Serb forces planted and activated 30 tonnes of explosive in the dam of the hydro-electric power plant. Despite the blast, the dam did not break.

Josipovic stressed the military operation had a great importance, but that it also had a humane component of solidarity showed by British member of UNPROFOR Mark Nicholas Gray who helped prevent the tearing down of the dam.

Josipovic decorated now retired brigadier Gray for his efforts in saving the dam and the Cetina River region from a catastrophe.

I am proud to had been able to make a contribution to the history of this great nation. I will forever remember my time here and feel committed to this country and its people, Gray said thanking the president for bestowing a Croatian state decoration on him.

Speaking at the ceremony, President Josipovic talked about military aspects of the Homeland Defence War, saying that they were "very important for our homeland where our soldiers had shown how to defeat the enemy by courage and heroism."

He said that twenty-something years after its liberation, Croatia would enter "the most exclusive club of European countries."

"We will show how Croatia is, can be and knows how to be a responsible country and it could not have been that without the people such as those who had liberated it," Josipovic said.

Operation Peruca Commander Zdravko Skarpa reiterated that the operation enabled the return of refugees to the nearby settlements, warning however that even 20 years later nobody has been indicted for this crime.

Josipovic also laid a wreath and lit a candle at a monument to Ante Buljan, a Croatian soldier killed in the liberation of Peruca 20 years ago.

Peruca Lake is the second artificial lake in Croatia.

It is located in inland Dalmatia, south of the source of the River Cetina, northeast of the State route D1 between the towns of Sinj and Vrlika.

The Lake is on the course of the River Cetina, bounded by Svilaja mountain to the southwest and Dinara mountain to the northeast.

The Peruca Dam was gravely damaged during the Croatian War of Independence, when on January 28, 1993, in the aftermath of Operation Maslenica, at 10:48 a.m., the dam was blown up in an intentional effort to destroy it by Serbian army forces. They mined it with 30 tonnes of explosive and detonated the charges with the intention of harming thousands of Croatian civilians downstream. The explosion caused heavy damage, but ultimately failed to demolish the dam. The Croatian communities in the Cetina valley (from Sinj to Omis) were nevertheless in great danger of being flooded by water from Peruca Lake. The actions of the UNPROFOR officer Mark Nicholas Gray prevented the disaster at the Dam because before the explosion he had raised the spillway channel and reduced the level of water in the lake by four meters. This prevented total collapse of the dam and engineers were quickly able to maintain the integrity of the dam. Subsequently, the Croatian forces intervened and recovered the dam and the surrounding area.