Moscow has taken on former chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte (right) as an ally in its fight against the International Criminal Tribunal on the Former Yugoslavia.
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Russia Accuses The Hague Tribunal
The UN Security Council heard a report by the International Criminal Tribunal on the Former Yugoslavia. Chief prosecutor of the tribunal Serge Brammertz stated that only four suspects remain at large, all of them Serbs, of whom the most important are former president of the Serbian Republic Radovan Karadzic and former commander of the Bosnian Serb army Gen. Ratko Mladic. Brammertz criticized Serbia for making insufficient effort to find the criminals.
Serbian UN Ambassador Pavle Jevremovic took a different position on the problem, noting that 41 of the 46 figures wanted by the tribunal were handed over to it, including former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic. Nor can the tribunal claim that archives have been closed to it, since it has visited the archives more than 20 times.
Brammertz also spoke about witness intimidation. He did not mention examples of that problem, although a later speaker mentioned Ramush Haradinaj leader of the Kosovan rebel group the Black Eagles, who later became prime minister of Kosovo and who, former prosecutor Carla Del Ponte claimed, intimidated and eliminated witnesses against him.
Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin has unexpectedly harsh criticism for the tribunal. “The tribunal claims to be unable to fulfill the resolutions of the Security Council within deadline… We consider the state of affairs in the ICTY unsatisfactory… It is difficult to draw coherent information from the organ’s report,” he complained. Churkin suggested that the tribunal be prohibited from holding trials of the first instance after January 1, 2009, although it plans to complete that work only in 2010. Defendants not caught or tried by Churkin’s deadline would be turned over to national jurisdiction. He added that an international successor organization to the ICTY should remain to pursue the cases of Karadzic and Mladic.
Although Russia’s enmity toward the tribunal is well known, the Security Council was caught off guard by Churkin. Finally British UN Deputy Ambassador Karen Pierce spoke in defense of the tribunal. Tribunal chairman Fausto Pocar promised to bear the Russian ambassador’s opinions in mind.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of June 06, 2008
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