Del Ponte said this in a statement which was read at an international conference on transition judiciary in Bosnia in Sarajevo on Wednesday.
Del Ponte's speech was read by the head of the ICTY Prosecutor's Office investigations Patrick Lopez Torres, because poor weather conditions prevented del Ponte's plane from landing in Sarajevo on time.
Del Ponte said in her speech that the public had the right to unbiased media reporting on war crimes trials and underlined it was important to respect rules governing the confidentiality of court documents and the identity of witnesses.
Del Ponte also called on prosecutors and judges in the Bosnian State Court's Council for War Crimes to treat war crimes cases with caution. It is absolutely inappropriate and unacceptable to talk to the media about investigations and evidence before the indictment is confirmed, she said.
The prosecutor said that unexpected difficulties appeared in the referral of court cases from The Hague to Bosnia-Herzegovina which, according to her, seriously burdened the ICTY Prosecutor's Office and its resources. She said that the way of referring cases had been brought into question because the ICTY prosecution was ready to refer the cases in electronic form, while Bosnian judges insisted on hard copies of court documents. As an example she stated a recent, relatively small case for which it was necessary to print and seal as many as 14,000 pages