Addressing the ceremony, Karamarko said that Interior Ministry servicemen had given an immeasurable contribution to the defence of Croatia during the 1991-1995 war, in which 733 police officers had been killed, 3,600 had been wounded and 36 were still unaccounted-for.
"Thanks to their sacrifice on the battlefield, today our country is on the threshold of entering the European Union and is a full member of NATO," Karamarko said.
As for reporters' questions about his plans for the forthcoming elections, Karamarko, a nonpartisan member of Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor's cabinet, said he would be politically engaged and that a way "to articulate it" would be found.
He said that he still did not know in which constituency he would run.
He would not comment on "those silly statements and accusations from Social Democratic Party (SDP) parliamentarian Slavko Linic about wiretapping."