There is no change in our position. Croatia is not fully cooperating with the tribunal, Del Ponte told reporters after meeting a five-member EU task force in charge of evaluating Croatia's cooperation with the tribunal.
The chief prosecutor said the runaway general Ante Gotovina was in Croatia, that he travelled from time to time to Bosnia-Herzegovina, and that he was within the reach of Croatian authorities.
Del Ponte added she hoped Gotovina would end up in The Hague very soon.
She told reporters that she had informed the task force of a network that was protecting Gotovina.
I explained to the task force why the Croatian authorities are not fully cooperating with the ICTY and provided them with all the details about the network within state institutions that is protecting the runaway general, del Ponte said.
Full cooperation with the tribunal will be achieved when the Croatian authorities hand Gotovina over or say where he is, she said.
I think that this can be done by the time I submit my next report to the UN Security Council on June 13, because Prime Minister Ivo Sanader has promised to be more active in locating the runaway general, she said.
Del Ponte arrived in Luxembourg at the invitation of the EU Presidency to inform the EU task force about the degree of Croatia's cooperation with the ICTY.
The task force, consisting of the foreign ministers of Luxembourg, Great Britain and Austria, High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana, and Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, held a separate meeting with del Ponte, after which it met the Croatian delegation, which was led by PM Sanader.
Del Ponte said that she would meet Sanader after meeting the task force.
She said she hoped that Croatian secret services were not working against the tribunal, but that it was true that some people in Croatia were giving away information to the media, which she said the government was expected to put an end to. She added that she believed that Sanader himself was not receiving all information from secret services.
Asked on what she based her claims that Gotovina was within the reach of the authorities, she said that she had an investigating team on the ground and was in contact with various intelligence services.
Del Ponte said she could not say where Gotovina was at the moment, but she had indications about his previous hide-outs. Asked what period those indications dated back to, she said spring last year.
The ICTY chief prosecutor said that only one, but a major case remained unsolved in Croatia's cooperation with the tribunal. She expressed satisfaction with the latest developments in cooperation between former Yugoslav republics and the tribunal, stating that there were only ten remaining fugitives, of whom two were in Russia, one in Croatia and the rest in Serbia.