POLITICS: UN War Crimes Tribunal Seeks to Boost Sagging Image

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, May 28 1999 (IPS) - The UN tribunal, which has indicted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes, is planning a public relations campaign to bolster its sagging political image in the Balkans.

“Virulent anti-Tribunal propaganda paints us as biased, slow and inefficient,” says Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Even before the bombing of Yugoslavia by warplanes of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in late March, the ICTY was viewed negatively by a large segment of the population of the region, she said.

In Croatia, “we are employed as a political football in the presidential election campaign,” she said. “In Yugoslavia, we are seen as yet another example of how the world is bent on subjugating the Serbs.

“So we are initiating an ‘Outreach Programme’ to boost the Tribunal’s public relations capacity.”

As part of the proposed campaign, the Tribunal will open several field offices in former Yugoslavia. McDonald said the ICTY is seeking about 1.3 million dollars in voluntary contributions to fund the project.

The United States already has contributed about 500,000 dollars while an unnamed US corporation donated computer equipment worth about three million dollars which will substantially enhance the Tribunal’s operating capacity.

Addressing the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations last week, McDonald said the Tribunal had come a long way in a short time.

“In just six years, we have built the foundations to discharge our mandate. The fact that this is still a long way off should not suprise anyone, much less be used to question our success or viability,” she added.

Currently, there are two adhoc war crimes tribunal: the ICTY in the Hague, which was established in May 1993, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, which was set up in November 1994.

Both were created by the Security Council to probe war crimes and investigate charges of genocide in their respective regions. The two Tribunals will cease to exist when a permanent International Criminal Court is established, perhaps by early next century.

Addressing a press briefing in March, Louise Arbour, Prosecutor for the two tribunals, complained about the “growing and more acute contrast” between the level of state cooperation the two Tribunals have been experiencing.

Of the 36 accused by the Rwanda Tribunal, 34 had been apprehended, arrested, detained and transferred to Arusha in, and by, African states.

“That was in dramatic contrast with the lack of cooperation that the Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was experiencing in the region, particularly and more dramatically, on the issue of arrests,” Arbour said.

In both the Republic of Srpska and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, she said, all existing public indictments, accompanied by arrest warrants, had remained outstanding.

There was also the non-compliance of Yugoslavia with respect to the need of her Office to pursue investigations in Kosovo.

In 1995, the ICTY indicted two Bosnian-Serb leaders, Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic, for war crimes. But the Tribunal has failed to bring them to justice primarily because of non-cooperation by the Yugoslav authorities.

Most political observers believed Milosevic also would evade the Tribunal’s dragnet.

Since the ICTY’s inception, 83 individuals have been publicly indicted in 24 indictments. Six individuals died, while 18 had charges against them dropped. One is serving his sentence and another was aquitted.

Currently, the total number of accused persons, pending arrest or pending completion of the proceedings, is 58 in 22 indictments.

Asked if the U.S. had in any way tried to block or expedite the indictment against Milosevic, Arbour said that “nobody was telling the Tribunal to move forward, or not to move forward, in any particular case.”

“That would be a completely futile attempt, since the Tribunal made its own decisions about the appropriateness of moving certain investigations,” she added.

Meanwhile, a five-member UN expert group studying the management of the two Tribunals, will prepare a report for submission to the General Assembly in September.

Last year, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) complained that the United Nations was giving higher priority to the war crimes tribunals than to the ICJ which was the highest judicial body in the UN system.

The ICJ said that while the UN General Assembly grudgingly allocated only 11 million dollars for its annual operating costs, the budget for the ICTY was about 70 million dollars.