"I have full confidence in Mr. Brkic. He is my aide and a man of integrity and credibility. I am not interested at this point of time in the contents of his final thesis and whom he quoted in his final thesis," Karamarko told reporters in the national parliament on Thursday after the Jutarnji List daily reported that the national police director had suspended two lecturers from the Police Academy on suspicion that they had helped 26 undergraduates in the past to plagiarise their final theses to graduate from the academy and that one of the 26 was Milijan Brkic, a high official of the strongest opposition party.

The HDZ chief slammed media reports as ugly insinuations.

"Brkic is a man who was among the three best students in his class. He was deployed in the Homeland Defence throughout the war and dedicated his life to Croatia, he is a hero of the Homeland Defence War who was always on the frontline and he was at the frontline in battles against corruption and crime," Karamarko said in his comment on the media accusations about Brkic's plagiarised final thesis.

Karamarko described the latest media reports as "a stampede of regime newspapers" against the HDZ.

Asked by reporters whether Brkic would be punished if it was proved that he had copied his final thesis, the HDZ chef retorted: "Did you compile your final thesis or write everything on your own when you were doing your final thesis? Didn't you compile it with your mentor".

Asked whether he wanted to say that Brkic was not in the list of those 26 persons suspected of plagiarism, Karamarko countered: " What does 'suspected of' mean? Neither the prosecutorial authorities nor the police acted in this case. As far as I understood, disciplinary proceedings have been taken only against two lecturers at the police academy. What does the final thesis mean, it is a compilation and not a scientific work. It is not a doctoral thesis".

Defending his close aide, Karamarko said that the headlines in the regime newspapers were pointless.

Responding to statements that earlier in the day the police did not dismiss media allegations that Brkic's final thesis was one of those plagiarised, Karamarko countered that it was the police that "are eagerly pushing such information and misinformation to the media."

Karamarko confirmed that he had already met with Brkic but he declined to divulge the contents of their talks.

"I will keep to myself what Mr. Brkic has told me," the HDZ leader said.

Social Democratic Party official and Education Minister Zeljko Jovanovic said earlier on Thursday, that if proven correct, the story about Brkic's plagiarised final thesis would confirm his claims that the HDZ leadership was corrupt.

After the news was broken about reports that the HDZ Secretary-General was among 26 people who are believed to have graduated from the police academy with plagiarised final thesis, HDZ spokeswoman Silvana Oruc Ivos told the press on Wednesday evening that the party still had no additional information and could not comment on anything.

The police confirmed on Wednesday evening that two professors at the police academy had been suspended on suspicion that they had violated their duties and that they had helped 26 undergraduates to compile identical final theses.