NEW YORK, Nov 11 (Hina) - The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday gave an exceptionally balanced response to the objections presented by the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY),
Carla del Ponte, regarding Croatia's cooperation with the ICTY. No statement was issued after yesterday's Security Council session, which was chaired by Slovene Ambassador Danilo Turk. Del Ponte spoke mostly about the work of Hague investigators in Kosovo. She formulated her objections regarding Croatia into a request in principle for the Security Council to allow the ICTY Prosecution to keep the power to initiate investigations, without possible political and ethnic manipulation. One must not allow Croatia to deny cooperation because it has made a unilateral decision that the Tribunal does not have jurisdiction over the investigation into actions by the Croatian armed
NEW YORK, Nov 11 (Hina) - The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday
gave an exceptionally balanced response to the objections
presented by the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Carla del Ponte,
regarding Croatia's cooperation with the ICTY.
No statement was issued after yesterday's Security Council
session, which was chaired by Slovene Ambassador Danilo Turk.
Del Ponte spoke mostly about the work of Hague investigators in
Kosovo. She formulated her objections regarding Croatia into a
request in principle for the Security Council to allow the ICTY
Prosecution to keep the power to initiate investigations, without
possible political and ethnic manipulation.
One must not allow Croatia to deny cooperation because it has made a
unilateral decision that the Tribunal does not have jurisdiction
over the investigation into actions by the Croatian armed forces
within the operation "Storm", del Ponte said in her first address to
the Security Council.
According to diplomatic sources in New York, the Dutch
representative in the Security Council has confirmed the
obligation of the States to cooperate with the ICTY. Speaking about
the dispute between Croatia and the Tribunal, he said the
legitimacy of the operation, which liberated most of Croatia's
occupied territory, was not being contested. The investigation is
not aimed against the military actions, its purpose is to establish
the truth about the crimes that were committed, the Dutch
representative was quoted as saying.
The representative of Great Britain remarked that Croatia in some
cases demonstrates an exemplary level of cooperation with the
Tribunal while in other cases it denies cooperation. Similar
assessments, which all share the conclusion that Croatia's
relationship toward the ICTY is not exclusively negative, were
given by other members of the Security Council.
The United States has amended del Ponte's report with individual
requests for establishing the responsibility of the infamous
Vukovar troika - Sljivancanin, Radic and Mrksic, as well as of
Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, and the
president of the so-called Republic of Serb Krajina, Mile Martic,
and war crimes suspects in Kosovo.
(hina) mm rml