AFTER more than a year of stalling, the United Nations Security Council has finally appointed Judge Richard J Goldstone as chief prosecutor for the tribunal set up to judge Balkan war criminals.

He was selected, approached and confirmed in office within a few days. Such lightning speed in a process hitherto characterised more by procrastination than by urgency is a tribute to UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali for choosing him, and to Goldstone's own merit as chairman of South Africa's commission of inquiry into "public violence and intimidation", now known as the Goldstone Commission.

The war crimes tribunal has just met in New York for its fourth session. At last it has a chief prosecutor, and the judge from South Africa now in charge is ready to get to grips with the dossiers on suspected war criminals.

Goldstone expects to move soon to The Hague, where the tribunal is to be based. "Until now I've been following events in the Balkan's as an impartial observer," he said, "so I will have to catch up on a lot of history and background."

The judge acknowledged that the work of the tribunal will be different from that of the Nuremberg trials, when Allied prison camps were filled with suspects. The Balkan tribunal has already leased 20 cells in a Dutch prison, which will become the first such establishment ever run by the UN. But so far there are no guests.

The tribunal's work may be hampered by political factors, such as pressure for a peace treaty which will legitimise the Serb retention of cities that were "ethnically cleansed" by them. There may also be demands for an amnesty in order to speed up negotiations.

Goldstone assured The European: "I think I proved I could survive similar pressures in South Africa. Being a lawyer trains you to think objectively and to be independent." He will need all the skills he acquired heading his South African tribunal, given the tendency of some Security Council members to favour peace talk expediency rather than justice. He will also have to contend with the bureaucratic caution of the UN's legal affairs section.

Disputes over procedure, funding and powers have delayed action by the tribunal. For example, the Security Council, which was concerned at the presumed Anglo-Saxon common law bias of Goldstone and his Australian deputy, Graham Blewitt, wanted a second deputy from a Roman law country. But South African civil law is Roman Dutch, with English court procedures added on, so Goldstone should be in a good position to bridge the gap.

A year ago the British and French vetoed the appointment of Professor Cherif Bassiouni, of De Paul University in the United States, who had headed the UN commission investigating war crimes. It was widely suspected that their reason was that his efficiency in tracking down war criminals was proving an obstacle to Lord Owen's attempt to enforce a partition plan on the parties. The Russians also refused to accept a Nato candidate on the ground that Nato was compromised by the air strikes it had carried out.

But now it seems that justice can at last be done. The Europeans and the Americans in New York finally seemed embarrassed at the absence of movement, and even the Russians could find no objection.

Preliminary investigations conducted by the deputy prosecutor will be complete by the end of summer; indictments will follow in late September or early October; and trials may begin by the end of the year.

The first case may be one concerning the concentration camp commanders from Prijedor. Political complications will no doubt arise if the investigation of one case reveals a chain of command leading right up to the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic. So there is plenty of room for political upsets.

Human rights monitors worry that the so-called "Bihac" agreement might become the model. There the breakaway Muslim leader Fikret Abdic concluded a separate peace with the Serbs in which each side promised to deal with their own war criminals. This was a euphemism for a de facto amnesty. The American ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, has made a point of insisting that it remains US policy that all war criminals must be caught and punished. Her determination was reinforced when she learned that a big hit in Belgrade is a song entitled "Daddy's A War Criminal But No One Dares Arrest Him."

So far it has seemed that such bravado is justified. The UN secretary-general's report to the Security Council summarised the evidence of Bassiouni's commission by saying: "The practice of so-called 'ethnic cleansing' and rape and sexual assault, in particular, have been carried out by some of the parties so systematically that they strongly appear to be the product of a policy, which may also be inferred from the consistent failure to prevent the commission of such crimes and to prosecute and punish their perpetrators."

The report was the final work of the commission, which wound up last year and transferred its resources and information to the The Hague tribunal. Now its 65,000 pages of testimony await the attentions of Richard Goldstone.

Ian WILLIAMS