"Tweny-two new accused have arrived at The Hague since the last report, meaning that there are now 50% more people awaiting trial than the last time I appeared before the Council. That dramatic increase obviously has significant implications for the Completion Strategy," Meron said in an address to the UN Security Council.
Noting that the arrival of the accused in The Hague should be applauded, Meron said that the remaining fugitive indictees could not be allowed to hide hoping that the ICTY would close its doors before they were located and arrested. In this context he mentioned the three "most notorious fugitives" -- Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, his military commander Ratko Mladic, and Croatian general Ante Gotovina.
As key elements that would require a prolongation of the tribunal's work, the ICTY president cited seven new indictments since his last report in November 2004, the uncertainty of decisions on ten cases proposed for referral to national jurisdictions, the absence of guilty pleas, the arrival of new accused and fugitives, the joinder of cases, including "a mega case" of eight or nine accused, and the uncertain time of arrival of the remaining ten fugitives.
"Knowing what we know now, the most I can indicate is that trials will necesarrily have to be concluded in 2009, and will most likely continue until the end of that year," Meron said, without mentioning a second deadline from the tribunal's exit strategy, according to which all appeals cases should be completed by the end of 2010.
The Hague tribunal is working "at maximum capacity", with the three trial chambers handling six cases simultanously, and the rules of procedure and evidence are being changed in order to speed up the proceedings, Meron said. He added that he had set up two working groups to look into ways of expediting trials and appeals proceedings.
Speaking in advance of the tenth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre on July 11, Meron said that "it is a shame that Karadzic and Mladic are still at large" and called on the international community to redouble its efforts to bring them and all those reponsible for that atrocity to justice.
He quoted from the judgement against Bosnian Serb general Radoslav Krstic, who had been convicted of genocide committed in Srebrenica. "By seeking to eliminate a part of the Bosnian Muslims, the Bosnian Serb forces committed genocide. (...) The Appeals Chamber (...) calls the massacre at Srebrenica by its proper name: genocide. Those responsible will bear this stigma, and it will serve as a warning to those who may in future contemplate the commission of such a heinous act."
Meron said that the ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda had created "a whole new corpus of jurisprudence on international criminal law, procedure and evidence, a body of law that will be the historic legacy of the ad hoc tribunals."
In conclusion, Meron announced that his presidency of the ICTY would come to an end in mid-November and that he would continue as an Appeals Chamber judge. This was his last appearance before the UN Security Council as president of the ICTY.
According to unofficial information from The Hague, Meron might be succeeded by Italian judge Fausto Pocar, who currently serves as ICTY vice-president.