I have informed the North Atlantic Council of my expectations from Croatia -- to arrest the two fugitives very, very soon, del Ponte said. I requested the support for the arrest of Ante Gotovina, but I also have another fugitive in Croatia -- Miroslav Bralo, the chief war crimes prosecutor said in Brussels after the closed part of her meeting with the North Atlantic Council, comprised of NATO member states' ambassadors.
The indictment against Miroslav Bralo was issued back in November 1995, but it was sealed until 12 October 2004. Bralo is charged with crimes against and cruel treatment of civilians in the Lasva River Valley in central Bosnia during the Croat-Muslim conflict. General Gotovina is charged with war crimes committed during the 1995 Operation Storm. He has been at large since the indictment against him was issued in June 2001.
After the meeting with the NATO ambassadors, del Ponte held talks with EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana. She, however, declined to give statements to reporters after the meeting with Solana.
Asked whether it was true that she was ready to refer the case of the Vukovar Three -- Miroslav Radic, Mile Mrksic and Veselin Sljivancanin -- to the Croatian judiciary, del Ponte briefly said she might do that.
The three JNA commanders are charged with war crimes committed in the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar in 1991.
After the meeting at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, the ICTY prosecutor said that the Serbian government's refusal to cooperate with the Hague tribunal was an absolute scandal.
Serbia is a much bigger problem, there are 15 fugitives there and the Serbian government has publicly said that it will not arrest them, del Ponte said.
NATO, like the EU, has set full cooperation with the ICTY as one of the conditions for NATO membership.
In mid-October, del Ponte informed the EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg of the cooperation of Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia with the UN war crimes tribunal. She then requested of the EU to pressure Croatia and Serbia into extraditing runaway ICTY indictees as soon as possible.
She also stressed she expected Croatia to arrest fugitive general Gotovina by the end of this month, because she would submit a report to the UN Security Council on November 23. That is a very important final deadline for the Croatian government, del Ponte said in Luxembourg,