PRESS CONFERENCE BY PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
Press Briefing
PRESS CONFERENCE BY PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
19980918
Muhamed Sacirbey, Permanent Representative of Bosnia and Herzegovina, urged the Security Council to review the non-compliance by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia Montenegro) with the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina by which the parties had agreed to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
Mr. Sacirbey said the Tribunal President, Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, had recently reported to the Council the failure of one party to cooperate with the Tribunal. At that time, Judge McDonald had asked the Council to fulfil its commitments to support the Tribunal it had created.
[In a letter to the Council dated 9 September, Judge McDonald informed the Council of the continuing refusal of the Government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to cooperate with the Tribunal by failing to arrest and transfer to the Tribunal's custody Mile Mrksic, Miroslav Radic and Veselin Sljivancanin, who have all been indicted by the Tribunal.]
Mr. Sacirbey said the failure by any of the parties to comply with provisions of the Peace Agreement must be dealt with very seriously. He had discussed the matter with the President of the Security Council, Hans Dahlgren (Sweden), and had met with the caucus of the Non-Aligned Movement. While the President had been forthcoming and the Non-Aligned Movement had expressed support for the points he raised, Mr. Sacirbey said some believed that the matter should take a back seat to issues relating to Kosovo. However, the Kosovo crisis had erupted because address of violations of the Dayton Accords had not been a priority.
He told a questioner that Bosnia and Herzegovina had several measures it could pursue in response to a substantial violation of the Peace Agreement. He noted that the Security Council had, in some cases, made presidential statements which had been followed by substantive action. The present case represented a flagrant violation. The individuals concerned had been indicted by the Tribunal. A United Nations body had demanded that they be turned over by a country which had committed itself to do so under an international treaty.
The question was whether the Security Council would "step up to the plate and take the first swing", he said. If the Council did not act, he said his country might have to consider what remedies it could pursue on its own.
Asked what he expected from the Security Council, Mr. Sacirbey said the Council should review whether its current strategy supported peace in the region and, in particular, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The future of the Tribunal would not look hopeful if the Council was unable to act in what was "a very clear-cut case".
An international legal system would not be effective without enforcement, he continued. He questioned whether the Security Council, which was the Tribunal's enforcement body, had lived up to its commitment to support the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
A correspondent questioned what could be done if the Council failed to act. Mr. Sacirbey said that when he had signed the Peace Agreement, in his capacity as Foreign Minister, because he had believed war criminals would not be allowed to escape the authority of an international war crimes tribunal. Many of Bosnia's representatives to the peace talks had felt the same way.
If the desire to deal first with Kosovo prevailed, he said it might take several years before the other matter was addressed. The talk of confrontation rather than reconciliation was again being heard in his country. People would not be in a position to reconcile, unless they felt that there was an effective methodology for dealing with those responsible for war crimes. Nor would reconciliation progress as long as some believed they could ignore the rule of law, rules set by the Security Council and rules established by the Dayton Peace Accords.
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