Sanader told a government session on Wednesday that he personally would prefer the town of Mali Losinj because the statue of the 'athlete after exercise' had been found in the Losinj archipelago.
The sculpture, one of the most valuable Croatian archaeological findings, was recently transferred back from Florence where more than 80,000 people had seen it. This Italian city helped Croatia to renovate it after local divers discovered it in 1999. Divers were engaged by the Ministry of Culture and the local police to recover from the sea the life-size bronze statue that is over two thousand years old.
Zagreb, Zadar and Mali Losinj are mentioned as possible places for the permanent exhibition of this statue.
The Ivo Sanader cabinet also decided to rename the Ivan Mestrovic endowment into a museum dedicated to the best-known Croatian sculptor.
The headquarters of the museum are to be relocated from Zagreb to Split as that Adriatic city houses most of Mestrovic's works.