Ghanem, the Secretary of the General People's Committee of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, arrived in Zagreb on Thursday as the first Libyan head of government to visit Croatia.
"While it was a part of Yugoslavia, Croatia had exceptionally developed relations with Libya, when Croatian companies were involved in major business projects. We want this to happen again in the future," Sanader said at a joint press conference after the talks.
"Today there is great interest on Croatia's part, because Libya has launched numerous infrastructure projects, and we want to take part in them," Sanader said.
Croatian construction company INGRA and petrochemical company DIOKI are already present in Libya and many companies want to join them, including shipyards which are interested in building ships for Libya, Sanader said.
The talks also focused on cultural and scientific cooperation, and the two prime ministers exchanged views on the situation in the regions where the two countries are situated.
Ghanem said that his visit was a follow-up to Croatian President Stjepan Mesic's visit to Libya in August 2003. He repeated what Mesic and Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi had agreed then, notably that it was in the interests of both countries to maintain good relations because Croatia could serve as Libya's gateway into Europe and Libya as Croatia's gateway into Africa.
We have settled all the problems with the countries with which we had any and now we want to restore relations with old friends, the Libyan prime minister said. In order to succeed in that, we must exchange visits, and this visit is proof of that, he added.
Ghanem said that possibilities for cooperation between Libya and Croatia were great, both on the political and economic level, citing the possibility of creating joint ventures.
Ghanem extended an official invitation to Sanader to visit Libya, which he accepted. A date is yet to be fixed.
Asked if Libya's relationship with the international community was affected by the case of Bulgarian nurses, who are on trial in Libya for allegedly deliberately infecting 400 Libyan children with the AIDS virus, Ghanem said that the trial was in progress and that one should wait for a final court judgement.
Ghanem insisted that the Libyan judiciary had nothing to do with politics and that it would decide on the fate of the accused nurses independently.
On the one side we have four nurses and a doctor and on the other we have 400 infected children. I do not agree with the point that this is about the nurses, but about the 400 children, he concluded.