That is why additional mechanisms are necessary so as to help establish the truth and bring justice and reconciliation in the area of the former Yugoslavia, Carla del Ponte said in Sarajevo on Friday where she was attending a regional conference on the establishment of the truth in the post-conflict period in the western Balkans.
The event organised by the Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Centre, the 'Documenta' organisation from Zagreb, and the Belgrade-based Fund for Humanitarian Law, gathered about 100 participants from the region and various international organisation.
The conference was officially opened by Ivo Miro Jovic, the Croat member of the three-man Presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina, whose opening speech caused surprise among many participants given that he expressed some arguments against verdicts which the ICTY made, and stressed that so far nobody had been proclaimed guilty according to their command responsibility for war crimes committed against Bosnian Croats.
"Currently, the number of Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina is reduced by 45 percent. The modern history does not know of such proportions of persecution or genocide," Jovic said.
After delivering a strong-worded speech, Jovic left the conference. Consequently, his talks and behaviour draw strong criticism from some participants.
The ICTY Chief Prosecutor, however, admitted that she had no illusions that her work or the work of the entire Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal met the expectations of the victims.
"Even some of the gravest crimes have not yet been tackled," she added.
There are thousands and thousands of victims and it is very difficult to meet their expectations, Del Ponte said explaining that she would like to publicly support the establishment of additional mechanisms which would help establish the full truth about war events.
One of those mechanisms may be a commission for the truth and reconciliation in Bosnia, like a similar body that has investigated the recent history of South Africa.
The Bosnian Chief State Prosecutor Marinko Jurcevic agreed with her, but he said that it would be now more important to help the country's Office of Prosecutor, i.e. the Council for War Crimes of the Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina to complete the job it had began doing.
Nearly 13,000 charges have been pressed against war crimes at various levels in Bosnia-Herzegovina and now prosecutors should decide where there are enough elements to issue indictments, Jurcevic said.
According to him, investigations into well-known cases of war crimes in Bosnia can be completed in ten to 15 years provided that the state authorities offer the strong support to the prosecution.
During her stay in Sarajevo, Del Ponte again accused the Serbian government of evading the apprehension of the war-time Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic.