Del Ponte: "If we lose our nerve now...."
Try Karadzic, Milosevic and Mladic
Carla Del Ponte Los Angeles Times Syndicate
Thursday, February 1, 2001
Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, spoke in Davos with Nathan Gardels, editor of Global Viewpoint, after visiting Belgrade:
Belgrade will not cooperate. They told me that we have no role there. If Slobodan Milosevic is ever to be tried, it will never be in The Hague, only in Belgrade. Their explanations varied. "The situation is dangerous." "Cooperation would add another element of destabilization." "Those prosecuted by the UN would become heroes." "The tribunal is in service to the United States." "We cannot cooperate because of NATO bombing, in which Serbs were the victims." This is a great deception on their part.
I received new information from Serbia that NATO advised Mr. Milosevic ahead of time that the television station would be bombed. He then only told some of the directors, but he did not inform the working technicians so they could leave. So, Mr. Milosevic himself obliged people to stay in the building knowing that it would be bombed so he could manipulate the situation against NATO. Our preliminary review of that bombing incident [on April 23, 1999,] has come to the conclusion that there is insufficient cause so far to open an inquiry. We have asked the Serbian authorities for more evidence, and if there is cause to open an inquiry, we will do it.
I have to say that I am surprised that this issue of NATO bombing arises all the time. How can this be a priority when each time I visit Bosnia-Herzegovina or Kosovo and observe the exhumation of thousands of bodies from mass graves? Our priority is prosecuting genocide and crimes against humanity. Karadzic, Milosevic and Mladic must be put on trial. That is our goal now.
Of course the 16 dead [at the bombed TV headquarters] are not unimportant, but they cannot be my priority.
If the international community does not follow its words with action, future dictators will be able to run and hide. They might not even take the trouble to run and hide because they know that they can remain inside their own borders with impunity. They will gamble that if one day things go wrong and they lose power, the political will to bring them to justice does not exist.
If my recent visit to Belgrade is any indication, it seems that national sovereignty is still a strong factor - it has not changed. Narrow state interests still dominate, and collective action is a problem.
Clearly, the International Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda should be the starting point, not the high point, of the move for justice against dictators and war criminals. Even if they can still hide, we must do what we can to make their lives as unpleasant as possible by freezing bank accounts, investigating business connections and issuing international arrest warrants that deter them from traveling abroad.
As we look at the statutes of the proposed International Criminal Court, I am concerned that states, in their own narrow interests, are beginning to recoil from the idea of international justice. But if we lose our nerve now it may take centuries to recover the resolve to assert law over violence. And that will simply pile tragedy upon tragedy in the times to come.
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