"No," Sanader briefly responded on Friday when asked by reporters if the government, former Foreign Minister Miomir Zuzul or Justice Minister Vesna Skare Ozbolt had negotiated with the fugitive general on his surrender.
The Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Carla del Ponte, said in an interview with Vjesnik newspaper published on Friday that earlier this year she had been told by authorities in Zagreb that they could get in touch with Gotovina, that he would surrender of his own free will and that they were convinced that they could persuade him to turn himself in.
"After the alleged mediator Kapetanovic allegedly contacted Gotovina in or around Mostar, the justice minister and the foreign minister came to me to The Hague for a meeting. They claimed that Gotovina's response was negative, but that they were continuing their efforts to persuade him to surrender," del Ponte said in the interview.
The chief prosecutor said she was upset when she found out that the meeting had not taken place and when she realised that Croatian authorities were trying to persuade Gotovina to surrender rather than arrest him.
Del Ponte stressed that many people were assisting Gotovina in evading justice, and that he certainly had a lot of friends in the Intelligence Agency (OA) and the Counter-Intelligence Agency (POA).
Asked if Gotovina's supporters in the OA and the POA had been identified, Sanader said he could not speak of the details of the government's action plan. "If you want something to succeed, do not talk about it in public," he said.