PM Sanader said on Wednesday that he was quitting active politics and later in the day he met with President Stjepan Mesic to formally notify him of his decision and to discuss the further procedure.
After their meeting, Mesic said in his telephone interview with a Zagreb-based radio station that Sanader had repeated at the meeting all what he had said at his extraordinary press conference earlier in the day: that he was tired of being active in politics for 20 years and that he was "thinking to continue with a new initiative".
Mesic said that Sanader did not rule his comeback into politics some day but that he ruled out illness as a reason for his resignation.
Mesic said that he could not comment Sanader's withdrawal as the victory of the right-wing faction in Sanader's Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) as he did not know many of new officials in that ruling party.
The Croatian president said that he did not know whether behind Sanader's resignation existed a tough falling-out inside the HDZ ahead of a meeting of the national anti-corruption committee which is to consider graft scandals involving the purchase of trucks while HDZ official Berislav Roncevic was the defence ministry and scandals about the replacement of former national police chief Vladimir Faber.
Asked whether he deemed Jadranka Kosor, the likeliest candidate for the new PM, to be competent and able to lead the government in times of economic crisis, Mesic said that he would be able to answer this question after seeing Kosor's proposals for ministers.