Some Croatian media carried claims by reporter Hassan Haidar Diab that Gaddafi had financed the former Croatian president.

"The allegation has no grounds whatsoever, regardless of whether 'evidence' will crop up in time to confirm its authenticity. Mr. Mesic's election headquarters have published complete data on the financing of his campaigns both in 2000 and in 2005," the former president's office said in a statement, underlining that those data were transparent.

"Diab formerly repeatedly requested an interview with the former President, insisting that Mesic should be portrayed as a close friend of Colonel Gaddafi who deserves every support. President Mesic gave the interview in which he spoke of his impressions of the then Libyan leader, but he retracted it because he realised that the developments in Libya made it no longer topical," Mesic's office said in the statement, adding that the reporter decided, "contrary to professional rules and ethics, to publish the interview three weeks after it was given and (retracted)."

"The Libyan rebels have just entered Tripoli, they are barely controlling the situation in the city, they have raided the archives of the Gaddafi regime and they happen to find in the first days, or maybe even hours, evidence that Colonel Gaddafi financed President Mesic, and, quite accidentally, they come across a reporter from Croatia whom they tell all this," Mesic's office said in a comment on Diab's allegations.

News agency Hina learned from sources close to Mesic's office that he would sue the reporter "for endangering his personal security, since in this way Mr Mesic is being put on Gaddafi's payroll, and for harming his reputation," and that he would sue "anyone publishing such nonsense".

Mesic's office recalls in the statement that the first person to make allegations about financial ties between the former president and Gaddafi was "the failed presidential candidate Boris Miksic", who, "after losing a court case for claiming that the French secret service bought Mesic a villa in the Azores, returned to that story again, claiming that the villa was bought by Colonel Gaddafi."

The statement also says that the "discovery" of ties between Mesic and Gaddafi "was made public less than 24 hours after the former President and honorary president of the association of anti-fascists SABA spoke strongly against using the prosecution of post World War II crimes to defame anti-fascism and the National Liberation Struggle, in the context of the parliamentary election campaign and as a means for individuals to assume the (desired) role of leaders of the right-wing camp."

At the end of the statement, the office of the former president recalls that Mesic was the first to raise the question of privatisation of Vecernji List daily, whose reporter Hassan Haidar Diab published the article on Mesic and Gaddafi.