Justice Minister and the Croatian delegation assured President Meron that they would redouble efforts to find and arrest General Gotovina, and we urged them to do so, said the spokesman for the ICTY registry and chambers, Jim Landale, after Wednesday's meeting of Meron and Skare Ozbolt in The Hague.
"We have discussed the remaining unsettled issues in our cooperation with the Hague tribunal, after the largest part of problems was solved. We have also discussed legal aspects of possible transfer of some cases (from the ICTY) to Croatia and the visit if the ICTY President to Croatia, scheduled for the first half of November," the Croatian minister said after the meeting.
We have also talked about the Gotovina case, and in this context Croatia voiced readiness to solve all the remaining cases so as to close the issue of cooperation with the Hague tribunal, she added.
Asked whether the Croatian delegation had informed the ICTY (the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) of results of last week's police operations against several men, suspected of helping Gotovina in hiding, the minister said that no report of this kind had been submitted, and added that "operations are being carried out and will be carried out with the purpose of finding and checking any information in connection with the Gotovina case".
The Croatian delegation included Chief State Prosecutor Mladen Bajic who held also a separate meeting with representatives of the ICTY Prosecution as part of their regular consultations, as well as Assistant Justice Minister Jaksa Muljacic and Croatian Ambassador to The Netherlands, Frane Krnic.
Regarding preparations for the transfer of some cases, the minister told the press that Meron had said that "Croatian has made great headway in the development of conditions for the transfer of cases to the domestic judiciary". The tribunal has set up a council which should soon decide on the transfer of the first case, namely the trial of generals Rahim Ademi and Mirko Norac, accused of war crimes in the 1993 Medak Pocket operation.
Asked whether the question about the tribunal's contentious decision on refusing to release temporarily Generals Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac pending trial was raised at the meeting, Skare Ozbolt said this topic had not been mentioned.
"It would be inappropriate to talk with the tribunal's president about this matter, given that the procedure is under way. The request for making it possible for the defence to appeal has been submitted, and it is now up to a chamber to decide," she added.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Croatian minister will hold talks with ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte, and after that she will visit generals Cermak and Markac in the Scheveningen detention centre.
On Thursday and Friday, Skare Ozbolt will attend an informal meeting od justice and interior ministers of EU member-states and candidates, who will gather in The Hague.