"The article is wrong, and even the date mentioned is wrong," Prosecution spokeswoman Florence Hartmann told Hina in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
The article alleges that ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte said during meetings with a number of European diplomats and Croatian government officials on April 15 that she had "reliable information that Croatian State Prosecutor Mladen Bajic has information about Gotovina's whereabouts, he knows who is helping the fugitive general, but nevertheless he is doing nothing to have him arrested."
It was never said that Bajic knew where Gotovina was. Globus's sources know well that the information they supplied is incorrect, Hartmann said.
The spokeswoman would not go into details of the article, but indicated that she had presented the Prosecution's position at today's weekly press briefing at the tribunal.
"Following the article in today's Globus about the Croatian State Prosecutor, Mladen Bajic, let me stress that we have trust in Bajic, we believe he is a good professional and we have developed excellent judicial cooperation with him," Hartmann said at the briefing.
Bajic told Hina by telephone he expected that the ICTY Prosecution would deny the article so he did not do it himself. He noted that the article was "completely unfounded".
Asked if any progress had been made in efforts by the interdepartmental group, of which he is in charge, to track down fugitive general Ante Gotovina, Bajic said he could not say anything about it.
At a summit on December 17 last year, the European Council demanded that Del Ponte confirm that Croatia was fully cooperating with the tribunal before opening EU membership talks with the country. Del Ponte assessed the cooperation as incomplete because Croatia had failed to track down and transfer Gotovina to The Hague, which resulted in the EU delaying the start of entry talks, which were to have begun on March 17. By all indications, Del Ponte will make the same assessment on April 26 in Luxembourg.