OSCE Chairman, ICTY Head welcome Permanent Council decision on intensified co-operation

VIENNA, 19 May 2005 - A meeting of the Permanent Council, addressed by the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Carla Del Ponte, agreed today to commence co-operation on monitoring war crimes trials.

The decision was welcomed by both Ms Del Ponte and the Chairman-in-Office of the OSCE, Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel.

The terms of the agreement, which follows a proposal from the Prosecutor to the Chairman-in-Office, involve the existing OSCE missions - to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia and Montenegro - in monitoring war crimes trials being transferred from the ICTY to the judiciaries of their respective host countries.

In welcoming the decision by the 55 participating States, Minister Rupel said this was another example of the ways in which the OSCE co-operated with other international organizations, recalling last week's landmark agreement over expanded co-operation with the Council of Europe, signed at its Summit in Warsaw.

Ms Del Ponte also praised the agreement between the OSCE and the ICTY, saying the Organization had been active in promoting justice and the rule of law throughout the countries of the former Yugoslavia.

"The OSCE is best-equipped to co-operate closely with the Office of the Prosecutor in the fulfilment of this important task and would thus play an important role in a key aspect of the completion strategy endorsed by the UN Security Council", she said.

"The relevant OSCE field missions are already involved in monitoring war crimes trials. I have observed that the OSCE has the capabilities to provide the kind of robust monitoring that the ICTY will need. In fact, the ICTY has already cited OSCE monitoring reports in several of its proceedings."

Elsewhere in her speech, Ms Del Ponte said that while the ICTY was trying its best to meet the 2008 deadline for the completion of first instance trials, one big uncertainty remained in its planning, however: "There are still ten accused at large, including three who have been mentioned by name in several Security Council Resolutions taken under Chapter VII of the UN Charter: Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and Ante Gotovina."

With the approach of the 10th commemoration of the massacre of almost 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys, following the fall of Srebrenica on 11 July 1995, she said it would be a provocation if the main culprits remained at large. She urged all OSCE States to assist in bringing the accused to The Hague.