Del Ponte says Serbia deliberately failing to arrest Karadzic, Mladic
11/12/2007
Outgoing chief UN war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte accused Serbia on Monday (December 10th) of deliberately failing to apprehend the two most wanted fugitives from the Balkan conflicts in the 1990s.
Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander, Ratko Mladic, top the list of four indictees still sought by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Along with multiple counts of war crimes, both face charges of genocide for masterminding the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim boys and men and the 43-month siege of Sarajevo. Karadzic and Mladic went into hiding shortly after the ICTY issued its initial joint indictment against them in late 1995.
"Despite the Serbian authorities' declared commitment to fully co-operate with my office and improved procedures, there is no clear roadmap, no clear plan in the search for fugitives, no serious leads and no sign that serious efforts have been taken to arrest the fugitives," del Ponte said in her final address to the UN Security Council on Monday. "Unfortunately, we have seen that level of commitment only in words, not in deeds."
The Swiss prosecutor, who will leave her post at the end of this month after an eight-year tenure, told the 15-nation body that both suspects had been
"repeatedly sighted" in Serbia in recent years. Karadzic, she said, spent some time in Belgrade, using his own name, as late as 2004, while Serbian authorities led negotiations with Mladic in the spring of 2006 in a bid to persuade him to surrender.
While urging Belgrade to take the necessary steps to capture Karadzic and Mladic, she also appealed to the Security Council to keep the ICTY open until the two are brought to justice. Under a completion strategy approved by the Council back in 2003, the UN tribunal in The Hague must wrap up all activities in 2010.
While the French and Belgian representatives said it was essential that those accused of serious war crimes face justice, the Russian representative appeared to disagree.
Urging the international community to keep pressing Belgrade to arrest Mladic, del Ponte also called on the EU and the European Commission to insist on Serbia's full co-operation with the ICTY as a condition in the "pre-accession and accession process".
http://www.balkantimes.com/cocoon/se.../11/feature-01