"The protective networks of Karadzic, Mladic, Gotovina and the other persons indicted by the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) who are still at large are simply waiting for the end of the Tribunal" in 2010 in order to get away with impunity, del Ponte said in her address to NATO's Permanent Council in Brussels on Wednesday.
She proposed that NATO provide operational assistance, destroy the networks supporting the fugitives or encourage deep structural reforms in the security sectors of the countries of the former Yugoslavia in order to ensure that all fugitives were arrested.
"With the interest of the most powerful nations turning elsewhere, it has become difficult to mobilise the intelligence and operational resources that could help locate and arrest them," del Ponte complained.
The prosecutor directed most of her criticism at the authorities in Belgrade for showing lack of readiness to arrest 15 fugitives on their territory. She criticised Croatia for failing to arrest Ante Gotovina and Miroslav Bralo, and said that the NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) in Bosnia-Herzegovina "has not arrested anyone for one and a half years".
Del Ponte expressed her great disappointment with the Croatian government for not arresting Gotovina despite the intensified efforts to do so.
"It is a great disappointment for the ICTY that Croatia has not arrested General Gotovina to this day. In the course of the spring, the Government apparently intensified its efforts to locate this fugitive, and I was confident that he would be arrested during the summer," the prosecutor told the ambassadors of the 26 NATO member states.
"It is very unfortunate that this did not happen and that, in July and August, the momentum was lost. Gotovina is still in Croatia," she added.
Speaking of Miroslav Bralo, whose indictment was unsealed on October 12 this year, del Ponte said that tribunal prosecutors had located him "in Croatia earlier this year and expected his arrest in the course of the spring".
"For reasons that remain unclear, the Croatian police did not carry out the arrest and he disappeared," she said, stressing that she expected the Croatian authorities to arrest Gotovina and Bralo by November 23 when she was due to submit her next report to the UN Security Council.
Del Ponte also said that in March this year Croatia had reacted "swiftly and efficiently" to new indictments involving eight accused and transferred them immediately to The Hague.
Speaking of Republika Srpska, the Serb entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the chief prosecutor said that the Bosnian Serb authorities "have still not located and arrested one single indicted fugitive to date". She added that Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic enjoyed their "full support and assistance" and "even manages to publish books that become best-sellers in Serbia".
She positively assessed a report by the Bosnian Serb authorities on Srebrenica, which has found that more than 7,800 Bosnian Muslims were killed there by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995.
Del Ponte underlined the importance of NATO's support to the Prosecution ahead of the deadline for wrapping up all investigations and issuing the remaining indictments before the end of the year.
"I am conducting six remaining investigations, and I will forward my last indictments for confirmation to the judges before the end of this year," she said.
Del Ponte said that two of the investigations concerned the leadership of the Kosovo Liberation Army, and complained about the accused and suspects exerting pressure on witnesses in Kosovo.
Speaking of the tribunal's completion strategy, under which the court will close its doors in 2010, del Ponte reiterated that the international community should not allow the tribunal's work to be completed "before the most senior officials accused of the worst war crimes, such as Mladic, Karadzic and Gotovina, are brought to justice in The Hague," adding that the European Union and the United States clearly supported this position.
In addition to the importance of political support being provided to the ICTY by the most important Euro-Atlantic organisations, including NATO, del Ponte also underlined the need to seek practical ways to help Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia-Montenegro and Croatia in their efforts to track down Karadzic, Mladic, Gotovina and the other accused.
She proposed three ways of helping these countries -- by providing operational assistance, by destroying the networks that support the fugitives and by encouraging deep structural reforms in their security sectors. "In all these areas, NATO is uniquely placed to make a difference," she concluded.