UNIAN - November 17, 1993, Wednesday - No 138 (Morning Release)

Kiev. The press-conference of the members of the Radical Party Council took place in Kiev. The press-conference dealt with the official opening on the 17 of November in The Hague (Netherlands) of the first session of the International Tribunal on military crimes in former Yugoslavia. Similar press-conferences took place in Rome, Bucharest, Ankara, Strasbourg, and Moscow. The International Tribunal has been set up in accordance with the resolutions of the UN Security Council of 22 February 1993. Its Statute contains two main provisions: absence of capital punishment and impossibility of a trial in absentia. As Nikolai Khramov, a member of the Radical Party Council, stated "the issue of persecuting military criminals for the crimes committed in Yugoslavia will not be resolved by the opening ceremony in The Hague. The Tribunal headquarters and budgets are the outstanding problems. However, if soon it becomes clear that such countries as the USA, United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Federation ignore the acti

vities of the Tribunal, we shall start a new stage of the campaign for setting up a political International Tribunal on military crimes." Markian Chuchuk, MP, Ukraine's Supreme Rada Human Rights Commission informed that the parliament considers an issue of setting up such a tribunal in Ukraine.