"It is not hard to figure out that the debt amounts to 0.04 per cent of the annual budget. If that is a threat to the existence of Croatia, then no one can save us," Sanader said in an interview with Vecernji List newspaper published on Wednesday.
The prime minister said that the government would certainly not send the bill to Parliament until it secured the necessary two-thirds majority.
He said that he wanted to rid future generations of the burdens of the past. "Every government has to respect the law and court decisions, and statements by Social Democratic Party (SDP) president Ivica Racan that this issue should be discussed for another 200 years are flippant and challenge Croatia's credibility."
"Those people are not foreigners, but former Croatian citizens who were forced to lose Croatian citizenship. Their property was confiscated, they went abroad and took other citizenships," Sanader said.
He added that, according to a list compiled by the former, SDP-led government, similar agreements with other countries would also come up for discussion, including those with the United States and Israel.
Speaking of Austrians, Sanader said that at issue was a small number of people who had been done injustice, and that the agreements concluded between the former Yugoslavia and Austria would not be abrogated.
"Everything we do and say is based on a Constitutional Court decision, rendered under the chairmanship of Jadranko Crnic in 1999, which is binding on the Sabor (Parliament)," he stressed.
"The Constitutional Court decision gives former citizens whose property was confiscated equal status as present citizens of Croatia. Crnic twice extended the time limit for Racan and his government to pass the bill. That is why his statements today sound strange, to say the least," Sanader said when asked to comment on a statement by former Constitutional Court president Jadranko Crnic that his decision did not mean an order.
When reminded that his party, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), opposed the passage of the bill at the time, Sanader said that it was true, "but now we are in a position that we have to respect that law."
Sanader criticised President Stjepan Mesic for unnecessarily dramatising the matter in his televised address to the nation. Asked why he thought Mesic had resorted to dramatics, he said that the President was probably wrongly advised that the proposed bill would tacitly invalidate the agreements concluded by the former Yugoslavia, which Sanader dismissed as untrue.
"If the public continues to be misinformed, I might also resort to addressing the nation in a similar way," the prime minister said.