Summary report of Mrs Bonino's visit to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (13 July 1995)

During her visit, Mrs Bonino met Mr Cassese (President of the Tribunal), Mr Goldstone (Chief prosecutor) and Mr Bos (legal Adviser to the Dutch Minister for Foreign Affairs). She also visited the premises of the Tribunal accompanied by Mr Cassese and by MrSampayo (Registrar).

MEETING WITH MR GOLDSTONE

Mr Goldstone stressed in particular the organisational and financial difficulties with which the Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (of which it was also named Chief prosecutor) are confronted.

These difficulties largely arise from the circumstances that these two Tribunals are not regularly financed by the general budget of the United Nations but by the budget relating to the peace-keeping operations on the basis of specific decisions. That makes the expenditure planning and medium-term programming difficult.

While expressing his satisfaction with the financial support given by the European Union up until now, Mr Goldstone nevertheless stressed the logistic difficulties faced by the Tribunal for Rwanda. In particular he confirmed the necessity to have a library in Arusha and/or Kigali as well as a video conference system in order to limit the number of displacements.

The Commission is now deciding (written procedure E/1433/95) a financial aid of ECU1,500,000 for the Tribunal for Rwanda, which should facilitate the carrying out of these projects.

MEETING WITH MR CASSESE AND MR BOS

During this meeting problems relating to the creation of an International Criminal Tribunal of a permanent nature have in particular been discussed.

In December 1994 the United Nations General Assembly decided to establish an ad hoc Committee on the creation of this Tribunal. The Committee held its first meeting in New York during the past April and is scheduled to meet again next August. In this occasion solutions will be sought to reconcile the various national legal traditions and the different approaches, concerning in particular the definition of the principal forms of crimes which should fall under the jurisdiction of the aforementioned Tribunal.

The General Assembly will have then to come to a conclusion about the possible convening of an international conference which should sanction the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal. Both interlocutors stressed the importance to speed up the process in order to be able to call this conference by the end of 1996 (the Italian Government offered to host the conference). During the conversation Mr Cassese and Mr Bos expressed the wish that the ad hoc Committee may follow a pragmatic approach aiming at concentrating, at least in a first stage, the activity of the Tribunal on a hard core of crimes such as genocide or crimes against humanity, on which it appears easier to reach a consensus.

In this context reference was also made to some US reluctances to accept that the jurisdiction of this Tribunal should be broadened in certain fields, such as international drug trafficking and war crimes.

As far as war crimes are concerned, it was emphasized that it would be certainly unsatisfactory to exclude the Tribunal from any possibility of control. As a compromise one could nevertheless envisage that the Country whose soldiers would make themselves guilty of such crimes can refuse the jurisdiction of the international Tribunal, provided that this same country undertakes to prosecute the soldiers in question.

In this case, the trial before the national courts should however take place under the control of the Prosecutor of the Tribunal who would be charged to write a public report on the progress of the action.

This compromise, even if not completely satisfactory, would make it possible to bypass the US (or other countries) reservations and to set up an international monitoring system on war crimes.