Sanader made the announcement at his party's convention in the southern coastal city of Split on Sunday evening, and said he would request an inquiry as president of the HDZ and not as prime minister. He did not give any details or a reason for the request, but just said that the truth had to be known.
Speaking of Croatia's efforts to join the European Union, Sanader said that the country's bloody history must never be repeated again and that for that reason Croatia must be inside the bloc. "The EU is not ideal, we all know that, but it offers greater chances of development."
He recalled the HDZ's initial platform of 1989, which identified the party's main goals as being creation of the Croatian state and its entry into the European Community as soon as possible. "And we are heading down that road," he stressed.
Sanader criticised the incumbent President Stjepan Mesic for not paying tribute to the founder and first president of Croatia, the late Franjo Tudjman, and said that all European nations had their great men and that Tudjman was a great man of Croatia's recent past.
"President Stjepan Mesic cannot pass by Franjo Tudjman's grave without even stopping," he said.
"It is also intolerable that the president of the state should say that we did not fight a war with Montenegro, and next day a minister from that country apologises to the Croats for what his country did in southern Croatia," he added.
The convention took place in Constituency No. 10, which covers the counties of Split-Dalmatia and Dubrovnik-Neretva, and mainly focused on HDZ presidential candidate Jadranka Kosor. Her party colleagues described her as an ideal president of the country.
Sanader called on party members to provide full support to Kosor during the election campaign. "We are proud of Jadranka, and she has proved through her work that she will be an ideal president of the state," he said.
Kosor thanked Sanader for nominating her as the party's presidential candidate. "I will, first of all, defend Croatian state interests. Unlike the incumbent president, I know who demolished Dubrovnik, Stradun and Konavle," she stressed.