In a ruling that was signed by Dutch Judge Alphons Orie, the trial chamber said that some of the questions raised by defence counsel concerned the establishment of facts and not the tribunal's jurisdiction and could therefore be solved only during the trial and presentation of evidence.
The chamber also said that defence counsel had misinterpreted the law applied before the tribunal and decided that legal theories offered by the defence had no basis in the existing tribunal practice.
Judge Orie, a member of the trial chamber, was part of a defence team that tried to challenge the tribunal's jurisdiction in a case 12 years ago.
Generals Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac are charged with crimes committed at the time of the 1995 Operation Storm. The indictment charges them with crimes against the Serb population committed before, during and in the aftermath of the operation, between July and September 1995, through ethnic cleansing devised as part of a joint criminal enterprise.