It is absolutely unthinkable that Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic might outlive the ICTY and evade justice. They have to be tried by the ICTY or some other international mechanism that will succeed the tribunal, said Williamson, a former ICTY prosecutor and UN official in Kosovo.
Participants in the conference agreed that one of the main obstacles to establishing the truth in the aftermath of wars and coming to terms with the recent wars was manipulation with the number of persons killed and gone missing. Three regional NGOs, the Zagreb-based "Documenta - Centre for dealing with the past", the Humanitarian Law Fund from Belgrade, and the Investigation-Documentation Centre (IDC) from Sarajevo, which organised the Zagreb conference, have launched an investigation to establish the actual number of victims from Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s wars.
Data on persons who went missing or were killed must contain detailed information such as the victim's name, date and place of birth, sex and age, as well as the place where the victim went missing or was killed and the relevant circumstances, said IDC director Safer Hukara.
The IDC today has a database with information on every Bosnian citizen reported missing or killed. The database contains information on 97,912 people, their photos, information on the circumstances of their disappearance or death, as well as witness statements, he said.
The president of the Croatian Helsinki Committee (HHO), Zarko Puhovski, criticised the Croatian government for failing to suggest to President Stjepan Mesic that Croatian army generals and officers sentenced to more than six months in prison be stripped of ranks.
Puhovski also wondered why Aleksandra Zec, a 12-year Serb girl who was killed with her parents in Zagreb in 1991, was not among 306 children - victims of the war in Croatia.
Speaking about the role of civil associations in society, Puhovski said that the HHO did not advocate "forgetting about Vukovar or Skabranja, or about Pakracka Poljana either".
The two-day conference gathered numerous politicians, judicial officials and human rights activists, including President Stjepan Mesic and ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte.
This is the second regional forum, the first one having been held in Sarajevo in May 2006. The purpose of the conference is to give a context to topics related to war events and intensify dialogue about mechanisms used in raising public awareness about the need to systematically and responsibly deal with the recent past of former Yugoslav countries.
Along with Del Ponte, the conference is also attended by ICTY President Fausto Pocar and Registrar Hans Holthuis.