The United States has exerted no pressure on the Chief Prosecutor so that she might give her positive opinion on cooperation with Croatia so as to ensure a go-ahead for the start of negotiations also between Turkey and the EU, which some have claimed. I do not know what the Europeans did but the United States has not exerted and is not exerting pressures on the Chief Prosecutor, the American official said in an interview published by the Sarajevo-based Dnevni Avaz daily on Monday.
He explained that the U.S. Administration holds regular contacts with the Hague-based tribunal and that the two sides discuss problems which that court faces and models for possible solutions of those problems.
We have never threatened and we are not going to withhold assistance to the tribunal if some problem is not resolved in a way we have wanted, the U.S. diplomat said.
Prosper said that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) would not be able to finish its job by 2010 and he ascribed this to what he called a lack of political will of governments of south-eastern European countries.
The governments in the region must resolutely react so as to solve this problem, Prosper said referring to the issue of fugitives: war-time Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic and retired Croatian General Ante Gotovina.
Prosper said he was surprised to hear that some war crimes indictees from Bosnia and Serbia were hiding in Russia. He added that Moscow was asked to thoroughly investigate such cases and Russian authorities pledged to do so but later they did not give any new reports on the matter.