"The Office of the Prosecutor of the ICTY rejects in the strongest terms allegations that the OTP is in any way involved in 'concealing documents' from the International Court of Justice or in any 'deal' whatsoever with the Belgrade authorities," reads the statement published in The Hague.
Geoffrey Nice, the chief prosecutor in the trial of late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic before the ICTY, has written to Croatian newspaper Jutarnji List saying that ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte made a deal with Belgrade which it used to conceal the evidence of Yugoslavia's involvement in the 1990s wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In a letter to Jutarnji List of Sunday, Nice said that in 2003 Del Ponte had approved protective measures for a reasonable part of documents of the Yugoslav Supreme Defence Council without having studied the documents first. Nice opposed this decision at the time, holding it an unnecessary concession to Belgrade.
Nice said that the deal had no legal grounds and served only to conceal evidence of Yugoslavia's involvement in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In 1993 Bosnia-Herzegovina filed a genocide lawsuit against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with the ICJ. The ICJ ruled earlier this year that Serbia is not responsible for genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but concluded that Belgrade is responsible for not preventing the genocide.
The OTP said in the statement that it "has no authority or involvement in proceedings before the International Court of Justice" and that it is the responsibility of the ICJ to determine what evidence it will consider and to request documents it deems necessary.
"This is not and cannot be the responsibility of the ICTY or its Office of the Prosecutor. As can be read in the text of its Judgement, the International Court of Justice chose not to request the documents in question," the OTP says.
"At the ICTY, in accordance with its Rules of Procedure and Evidence, only the Judges and not the Prosecutor can decide on the protective measures to keep material from the public. Rule 54bis of the Rules allows a state to apply for protective measures for reasons of national security interests and, in such cases, it is the Judges of this Tribunal, and not a party to the proceedings that can make such a determination upon examination of all the relevant documents in the case."
"In conclusion, any allegation that the Office of the Prosecutor has been involved in hiding evidence is entirely false," the OTP says in the statement.