"Svobodnaya Gruziya" (Free Georgia), 19 November 1993, Tbilisi

Kira Andronikashvili

Press-Centre, Georgian Embassy, Moscow

On 16th of November, Moscow, the Radical Party held a press-conference to mark the opening on the 17th of November, The Hague, of the International Ad Hoc Tribunal on Military Crimes in ex-Yugoslavia. The Radical Party initiated a campaigns for the setting up of this Tribunal. Similar press-conferences, as the spokesman of the party reported, will take place simultaneously in Rome, Budapest, Bucharest, Tirana, Ankara, Zagreb, Strasbourg, Kiev, and Ouagadougou.

As the vice President of the Radical Party General Council Mr. Mamuka Tsagareli said the foundation of the International Tribunal by the UN Security Council was an outcome of the 10-month party's campaign during which its representatives continuously addressed international organizations and governments of the world community with a call to positively resolve this issue.

The member of the Radical Party General Council Mr. Nikolaj Khramov underscored the viability of the Court man necessitate this initiative to be a constant one. "And the fact that such a permanent court is necessary is well demonstrated by the latest events in Abkhazia or, to be more exact, in Georgia whose part Abkhazia has always been... Trying to get justice for women and children in Sarajevo we thereby are seeking a future justice for Georgian refugees who are freezing to death in the mountains of Svanetia or those who will never come back to Sukhumi...", Mr. N. Khramov said.

Over less than a month, the Radical Party collected over 25,000 signatures (including those of the Nobel prize-winners, parliamentarians, world-renown scientists and scholars) which came from the whole world and were handed over to the UN General Secretary.

The Court's Statute was approved on the basis of the text of the Italian governmental commission submitted to the UN. Mr. Tsagareli underlined that the Statute incorporated the two essential points which became central in the Radical Party's campaign: absence of a death penalty and impossibility to try culprits in absentia. "Crimes against humanity should be condemned," M. Tsagareli said.