"We had a tip-off and some information indicating that Ante Gotovina could be hiding in a religious building in Croatia. We made a check, with the church authorities in Croatia being more than cooperative, and found that the information was false," Interior Ministry spokesman Zlatko Mehun told Hina on Tuesday.
He was asked to comment on a statement made by Hague tribunal chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte in an interview with the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, which was made public on the paper's web site on Tuesday.
Del Ponte told the newspaper that Gotovina was hiding in a Franciscan monastery in Croatia.
Mehun said that the Croatian Ministry of the Interior had not received any new information about Gotovina allegedly hiding in the monastery in Croatia.
The spokesman would not reveal which religious facilities in Croatia the police had checked and when. He recalled that there had also been speculation about Gotovina hiding in a monastery in neighbouring Bosnia-Herzegovina.
"The Croatian Ministry of the Interior cannot comment on speculations relating to a neighbouring country," Mehun said.
The Croatian Bishops' Conference (HBK) has fully rejected the accusations levelled by del Ponte against the Holy See and the Catholic Church in Croatia.
Leaders of the Catholic Church in Croatia "have no knowledge or indications as to where the fugitive General Gotovina might be," the Croatian Catholic news agency IKA quoted HBK press secretary Anton Suljic as saying on Tuesday.