The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Serge Brammertz, addressed the United Nations Security Council in New York on Monday, stressing that Croatia continued to respond in a timely and adequate manner to his office's requests for assistance, adding, however, that after a judgement against Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac was handed down, top Croatian officials did not objectively comment on the the judgement.
ddressing the Security Council today, Brammertz said that limited progress was made in the search for documents from the 1995 Operation Storm, while in his written report, which was previously submitted to the Council, Brammertz said that "a number of inconsistencies and questions raised in connection with the Task Force's findings, as mentioned in the Prosecutor's last Completion Strategy Report, remain unresolved. The missing documents are unaccounted for."
Croatia's full cooperation with the ICTY is one of the benchmarks for closing the policy area no. 23 on the Judiciary and Fundamental Rights in Croatia's EU entry talks.
Commenting on cooperation with Serbia which he harshly criticised in his written report a month ago, Brammertz said Serbia had met one of its key obligations to the U.N. tribunal for the former Yugoslavia by arresting Bosnian Serb wartime military commander Ratko Mladic.
Prosecutor Brammertz however told the Security Council that Belgrade still faced "troubling questions" about why war-crimes suspect Mladic was able to remain at large for 16 years so long.
"With Ratko Mladic's arrest, Serbia has ... met one of its key obligations towards the tribunal," Brammertz told the 15-nation Security Council.
"The fact remains that he was at large for 16 years," Brammertz added. "This raises troubling questions about how it was possible for this individual to elude e the substantial resources of a state system for so many years."
At the end of his address, Brammertz said the Office of the Prosecutor wanted the last ICTY fugitive Goran Hadzic to be arrested without a delay.
Former Croatian Serb rebel leader Hadzic is indicted for crimes against humanity committed in Croatia.
ICTY president Patrick Robinson said in his address that the arrest of Ratko Mladic was a turning point in the tribunal's history, underlining that Hadzic was still at large.
