Meron and the tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, today submitted reports to the UN Security Council on the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and its cooperation with the region's countries.
Meron said Croatia's cooperation was good in all fields except the arrest of Gotovina, the only fugitive from Croatia. He added Gotovina should have been arrested a long time ago, and that his arrest and transfer to the ICTY remained a top priority issue.
Speaking of the cooperation of other former Yugoslav countries, Meron said the Bosnian Serb entity did not cooperate at all, while the tribunal remained concerned about the insufficient cooperation of Serbia and Montenegro, notably their lack of will to arrest the fugitive indictees.
Meron told the Security Council that intensified cooperation between the region's countries and the ICTY, and the possibility of transferring some cases referring to lower and medium profile indictees to local courts were important factors in the implementation of the ICTY's exit strategy.
Under this strategy, all investigations are expected to be completed by the end of this year, all trials by the end of 2008, while the tribunal is expected to close its doors in 2010.
Speaking of the transfer of cases to national courts, Meron said the ICTY was trying to help in the training of local judges and prosecutors to enable them to take over the ICTY's cases.
In this respect, Meron commended Croatia, saying that during a visit earlier this month he was impressed by the professionalism he saw at the Supreme Court and the Zagreb County Court. He said he was optimistic concerning their increasing capability to prosecute war crimes in line with international human rights and the necessary standards.
Meron said he received a letter from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe Mission to Croatia on November 12, which said that the limited number of courts in Croatia could tackle a limited number of ICTY cases, and that a higher number might burden the national judiciary. Meron added he was not concerned about that because the number of cases to be transferred to Croatia would likely not be high.
He said that according to the current state of affairs, the ICTY could complete by 2008 the trials of all who were currently in detention or provisionally released, as well as the Gotovina trial if he was extradited before 2006 and tried together with two other Croats, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac.
Meron said that every new case, including the arrest of Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, made the meeting of the 2008 deadline conditional on the resolution of some current or future cases in another manner and not through full trials in The Hague.