The New York Times

Tuesday, November 9, 1999

Judge Says Yugoslavia Impedes Work of War Crimes Tribunal

By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN

UNITED NATIONS -- The president of the tribunal examining war crimes in the Balkan states that were once part of a larger Yugoslavia told the General Assembly Monday that the Yugoslav government has continued to obstruct the court's work and suggested that the Security Council lacks the will to force it to comply.

The judge, Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, said a majority of suspected war criminals indicted by the tribunal are walking about free in Serbia, the major republic remaining in Yugoslavia, and in the Serbian enclave in the now-independent Bosnia, which is patrolled by French troops in the NATO peacekeeping force.

In a speech to the General Assembly, Judge McDonald said, "It is simply unacceptable that territories have become safe havens for individuals indicted for the most serious offenses against humanity. It must be made absolutely clear to such states that this illegal and immoral behavior will not be tolerated."

Judge McDonald, whose six-year term on the tribunal ends next week, spoke even more bluntly to reporters after her speech. She said the French force in the Bosnian Serb enclave must arrest the territory's wartime leader, Radovan Karadzic, and military chief, Ratko Mladic. Both have been indicted for war crimes.

"What does it take?" Judge McDonald asked at a news briefing. "It takes action."

Judge McDonald said she addressed the Security Council twice and wrote four letters about Yugoslavia's lack of willingness to help. The council, she said, has a range of sanctions at its disposal to force cooperation. "But first you have to have the will, the political will to do something about it," she said to the reporters.

Last May, the tribunal indicted Yugoslavia's president, Slobodan Milosevic, and four senior aides, charging them with crimes against humanity -- including murder, deportation and prosecutions -- in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

Judge McDonald said Milosevic's government posed one of the tribunal's biggest problems. "It's noncompliance and it's now reached the level of absolute obstructionism," she said.

She referred several times to the tribunal's indictment four years ago of three Serbian army officers charged with killing 260 men in the Croatian town of Vukovar on Nov. 19, 1991. Yugoslav authorities have yet to hand over the accused Serbs -- Mile Mrksic, Veselin Sljivancanin and Miroslav Radic -- and have said the tribunal should make its files available to them so the Yugoslavs could conduct their own inquiry.

Judge McDonald also said that Croatia has refused to transfer Mladen Naletilic, a Croat indicted for war crimes, to the tribunal's custody. Naletilic is ill, the Croatian Mission to the United Nations said, and will be handed over when his health improves.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, as the court is formally known, was established by a Security Council resolution on May 25, 1993. Its mandate is to prosecute people responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law in the countries that were part of Yugoslavia before Communism fell. So far, 91 people have been indicted. Six of them have died, and charges have been dropped for 18. Judge McDonald said that only 10 suspects have been tried.

The tribunal's resources are limited, said Judge McDonald, a former United States federal judge, and it cannot try everyone connected with the atrocities.