"The Secretary-General wishes to make clear that the Special Rapporteurs of the Commission on Human Rights act in their personal capacity as independent experts and to not represent the views of the Secretary-General or of any intergovernmental organ," a spokesman for Mr. Annan said today. He was commenting on the statement attributed to Jiri Dienstbier, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. That statement, the spokesman said, had caught Mr. Annan by surprise."The Secretary-General recalls that the question of indictments before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, under its Statute, falls within the exclusive competence of the Prosecutor and the Trial Chambers acting as independent organs of the Tribunal," the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, the spokesman for ICTY Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, Paul Risley, said he could not comment on the words of another UN official, but added that the Prosecutor's Office had no intention of changing or challenging the indictment of Mr. Milosevic or members of his Cabinet charged with crimes committed in Kosovo in 1999. He also said the legal basis for the indictments was very clear.
