Del Ponte to meet with Solana and Rehn

Del Ponte to meet with Solana and Rehn

Del Ponte said yesterday that she has been trying to convince EU countries not to resume Stabilization and Association Agreement negotiations with Serbia, as Belgrade has failed to co-operate with The Hague. She also said that she intends to persuade Solana an Rehn to deny Serbia any such concessions.

Carla Del Ponte to step down in September

The chief prosecutor of the U.N. war crimes tribunal confirmed Tuesday she will retire in September, frustrated that two of the three men most responsible for the mayhem in the Balkans during Yugoslavia's demise could end up going free.

Carla Del Ponte, the tribunal's third and longest serving chief prosecutor, will be remembered primarily for overseeing former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosević's genocide trial, which ended before a verdict could be reached after he died of a heart attack in his cell in March.

"After eight years, I have done my work. It's time for me to go back to a normal life," she told reporters.

In a wide-ranging question-and-answer session, Del Ponte said that in the dozens of trials she has supervised — including 20 in which the defendants pleaded guilty — "I never saw one who had real remorse." Del Ponte said she was leaving satisfied, though Milosević's inconclusive trial was a disappointment.

"What we have done is a historical achievement," she said, pointing to 61 indictments drawn up by her team. She said since 1999 she has brought almost all the most senior political and military leaders to The Hague to face justice.

She warned that the tribunal's two leading fugitives, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić and his top general Ratko Mladić, could go free unless they are caught before the tribunal is closed in 2010 and the U.N. Security Council takes no further action.

The U.N. Security Council has instructed the tribunal to finish its last trials by 2008 and conclude the appeals process within another two years, before closing down. If the court no longer exists, its arrest warrants against Karadžić and Mladić will become invalid, she said.

"If the tribunal must close the door by 2010, they (the Council) must find another solution" for the remaining fugitives, Del Ponte told reporters.