"On behalf of the government and myself, but also on behalf of President (Stjepan) Mesic, with whom I talked twice in the past two days, I can only say that there is no underworld, illegal or other group from the intelligence underworld or politics that will prevent us from decisively combating organised crime, bribery and corruption," Sanader said at Thursday's government session.
The PM said that he, Mesic and chief state prosecutor Mladen Bajic had agreed a fierce resistance and determined fight against "those evils of contemporary democracy".
Sanader said "the whole Croatia is laughing" at the publication of the document which the media allege was mentioned to Mesic's advisor Sasa Perkovic by retired general Vladimir Zagorec.
"We are talking about ridiculous false accusations," Sanader said, adding that "Croatia is not and will not be silt, mud and a swamp".
Everyone will have legal protection, "be it president of state, the prime minister, the chief state prosecutor, because this was an attack on the three of us, or a fisherman, a student or any Croatian citizen," said Sanader, adding that this "silt, mud and swamp and the leftovers from the 1990s we will clean out of Croatian society without compromise".
Sanader said he did not want to believe that the allegations were part of the election campaign, "that someone from other parties had a hand in this". He added, however, that he wanted the other parties to take a position, saying that in the contrary, the public would get the impression or at least wonder why they did not distance themselves from the allegations.
Sanader said he thought the allegations came from those broadly touched by Operation Maestro, which recently saw eight senior Privatisation Fund officials arrested for financial wrongdoing. "Maestro is not over and what has been happening over the last month or two is part of the reaction, because fear leads to such false accusations against me, President Mesic and Chief State Prosecutor Bajic."
Sanader voiced full support to the police, the State Prosecutor's Office, the Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organised Crime, the Money Laundering office, and the tax and customs administrations in the fight against crime and corruption, underlining that he fully respected the three-branch system of government.