EU Statement in response to the address of the Chief Prosecutor of the ICTY (Vienna)

The European Union welcomes the ICTY Chief Prosecutor, Mrs Carla del Ponte and thanked her for addressing the Permanent Council. The EU continues to support the work of Mrs del Ponte and of the Tribunal who are making an important contribution to civil reconciliation, peace and stability in the region.

While acknowledging that some progress has been made, we are deeply concerned that a number of countries and parties of the region are still failing to co-operate fully with the Tribunal as stated also by the General Affairs and External Relations Council on 13 October. The full text of the statement has been circulated.

We call once again on all the countries and parties concerned to improve and intensify co-operation with the Tribunal, in particular in their efforts to bring Karadzic, Mladic and Gotovina to the ICTY. We recall the pledge made by the countries of the region at the EU-Western Balkans summit at Thessaloniki in June 2003 and reiterate their obligation to co-operate fully and unequivocally with ICTY, which is essential for their further movement towards the EU.

In keeping with UNSCR 1503, the EU supports the efforts by the High Representative/EU Special Representative Ashdown to establish a special War Crimes Chamber within the State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. EU member states and the European Commission pledged substantial financial contributions to this end at the recent donors conference at The Hague.

We fully support the important work being done by the OSCE missions in the region to promote rule of law including by strengthening national judicial systems and supporting police reform. Monitoring of domestic war crimes trials constitutes an essential contribution in this context. We have listened with interest to Mrs del Ponte's proposals for greater involvement of the OSCE in support of ICTY's completion strategy and look forward to further discussion of these.

The Acceding Countries Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia and the Associated Countries Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey align themselves with this statement.

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