Officials at the ministry also would not say if Croatian services had taken part in the arrest of Gotovina, who has been on the run since July 2001, when he was indicted for crimes committed in the course and after the 1995 Operation Storm.
"All these years the Ministry of the Interior was checking various reports about Gotovina's movement in the country and abroad, and all the locations abroad were checked in cooperation with the services of foreign countries, but the checks did not yield any results," ministry spokesman Zlatko Mehun said.
He added that the ministry could not comment on any details or circumstances of the arrest.
The Spanish media reported that Gotovina was arrested on Wednesday while having a dinner at the restaurant of the "Bitacora" hotel in the south of Tenerife. He had a fake passport bearing the name of Kristijan Horvat.
Since he was indicted by the Hague tribunal in mid-2001, the media named different locations at which he was reported to have been hiding. He was reported to be hiding in a Franciscan monastery in Herzegovina, with Croatian emigrants in the Canadian city of Norwall, that he was spotted in Kiev, in the Zadar area, in a Franciscan monastery on the Croatian island of Vis and near Bosansko Grahovo in neighbouring Bosnia.
The Ministry of the Interior received the news of Gotovina's arrest through the usual police channels, Mehun said.
Asked how the police would respond if protests in support of Gotovina were staged, Mehun said the ministry had not taken any additional measures nor had a reason to do so. "If the public peace and order are violated, the organisers will face sanctions envisaged by law".