International Herald Tribune

Tuesday, June 16, 1998

In War Crimes Seized at Start Of Court Talks

By Charles Trueheart

Washington Post Service

ROME - Even before the opening gavel on Monday, diplomats at a conference to establish a permanent international war crimes court got a reminder of why they are here.

At 8 A.M., French and German unit of the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Foca, southeaster Bosnia, arrested a former Serbian prison camp commander who is accused of having overseen the confinement and torture of scores of Muslims, and the execution of at least 29, in 1992 and 1993.

Milorad Krnojelac, 57, formerly a captain in the Yugoslav People's Army and a commander of the notorious Foca prison, was captured without incident on his way

to work as a school principal.

He was delivered to The Hague and will face the International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Mr. Krnojelac was the 28th suspect to turned over to the tribunal and was among

a number f indicted persons whose names the court, funded by the United Nations, keeps secret.

His arrest was notable because of the lead role of French forces and the suspect's location, in the French-controlled sector of eastern Bosnia.

A French Defense Ministry statement noted that French special forces had been involved in the operation, which unfolded without incident or casualty.

France has been criticized - by the chief prosecutor of the Hague tribunal among others - for failing to arrest war crimes suspects, as its United Nations and NATO obligations required it to do, and for at first refusing to let its officers and testify at the Yugoslavia tribunal.

The French government was also bruised by the recent disclosure that one of its liaison officers in the French sector might have prevented the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, the former Serbian political leader who is the Hague tribunal's most wanted Bosnian war suspect.

The existing tribunals for Bosnia war crimes and the 1994 Rwanda genocide have served as test cases for the jurists and diplomats preparing the 150-nation conference getting under way in Rome.

The conference has a deadline of July 17 to write a treaty establishing a permanent war crimes court, technically independent of the UN Security Council, which would determine culpability and punishment for architects of future Bosnias and Rwandas.

In a description that could apply to either recent example of mass carnage, the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, told the conference: "When crimes are committed on such a scale, we know that the state lacks either the power or the will to stop them. Too often, indeed, they are part of a systematic state policy and the worst criminals may be found at the pinnacle of state power."

Mr. Annan lamented the passing of a "warrior code of honor" that once governed warfare and regretted that Cambodia's murderous Pol Pot had never been "brought to answer for his crimes before a court."

He told delegates that " the eyes of the victims of past crimes, and of the potential victims of future ones are fixed upon us."

The U.S. government, which has been among the pilots of the process that led to this conference, came under immediate criticism from human rights groups participating here for trying to restrict the power of the future court.

U.S. negotiators re following instructions that try to accommodate the enthusiasm of some Washington officials for the permanent court as well as the sharp misgivings of some others about a court with any supranational authority.

The court that the United States seeks "is one that it can control, one that it and other Security Council members can turn on and off like a spigot," said Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch.

He said that Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, the skeptical chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, was seeking "veto control over any prosecution of any American citizen."

Mr. Dicker added that "the likelihood of Senate ratification of a court that's independent and impartial is negligible to nil in the near future."