the chief prosecutor of the UN tribunal, Carla del Ponte, urged amending the country's constitution to ensure more effective governance and a functioning state.
The main achievement of the Dayton peace agreement was putting an end to the war and protecting peace. Now is the time to step forward into a new stage in the history of Bosnia-Herzegovina. A functioning state must be established. Building on the legacy of Lord Paddy Ashdown, amendments to the constitution should be adopted to ensure effective governance, del Ponte said at a conference in Geneva on Friday, held to mark the 10th anniversary of the Dayton peace agreement.
Cooperation between the ICTY and Bosnian institutions at all levels has revealed serious flaws, which is evidenced by their inability to even get close to arresting the most wanted fugitives, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, she said.
She warned that the shadow of unpunished and often denied war crimes continued to disrupt relations between the country's main ethnic groups.
Reconciliation must be strengthened and the functioning of the judiciary must continue until completion, she said.
Of the 162 persons indicted by the tribunal, more than 120 were indicted for crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina, from all sides of the conflict, and several were indicted for the most serious war crime, genocide, which happened in Srebrenica, del Ponte said.
Speaking about the fugitives, she said that only four persons indicted for crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina remained at large and reiterated that justice would not be served without Karadzic and Mladic being put on trial.
Del Ponte said that there were three priorities in efforts to strengthen peace and reconciliation: wrapping up the tribunal's work, continuing trials before national courts, and promoting the awareness of the reality of war crimes. The first task belongs to the tribunal, and the other two to the region, she said.
Speaking about the referral of cases to national jurisdictions, del Ponte said that the court for war crimes in Sarajevo and other local courts would have many cases to deal with.
She called for the material collected by the tribunal over the last ten years to be made available to the public, including documents, testimonies and video recordings, in order to contribute to the collective understanding of what happened in the area in the 1990s. In that context, del Ponte placed emphasis on channeling that knowledge into education systems so that young people could learn the truth.