This is
not a NATO Press Release
http://natopa.ibicenter.net/default.asp?SHORTCUT=578
THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL
FOR THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA MUST COMPLETE ITS MISSION BEFORE SHUTTING DOWN
BERLIN, 25 May 2008 – After 15 years, the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) still has to complete the
task assigned to it upon its establishment in 1993, before finally and
completely shutting down, said Stéphane Bourgon, a defence lawyer at the ICTY,
last Sunday during the Spring Session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (NATO
PA), in Berlin. “The main fugitives from the ICTY, Karadzic, Mladic, Zupljanin
and Hadzic must still be arrested and appear before the Court before it closes
its doors some time around the year 2010”, insisted Mr Bourgon, addressing the
parliamentarians in the Committee on the Civil Dimension of Security.
The former military and political leaders of the Serbs in Bosnia,
Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, are accused of being the men principally
responsible for the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. Stojan Zupljanin was a Bosnian
Serb senior police official during the war which ravaged Bosnia between 1992 and
1995. Goran Hadzic was a Croatian Serb leader during the Serbo-Croatian war from
1991 to 1995. Responding to the Russian parliamentarian Vladimir Zhirinovskiy,
who deprecated the fact that only Serbs had been indicted by the ICTY, Mr
Bourgon said: “It is true that we prosecuted a large number of Serbs. Although
crimes were perpetrated on both sides, we concentrated on those that committed
the most serious crimes”. The ICTY was set up in 1993 to judge those with the
highest degree of culpability for the war crimes committed during the conflicts
in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. It is planned that the ICTY should cease
operating between 2010 and 2012, even if trials are still pending. “The best
solution would be for the Security Council to prolong the life of the ICTY for a
limited time and with a limited number of judges to avoid the idea that impunity
is possible,” Mr Bourgon noted. If that route is not taken, recourse to the
International Criminal Court (ICC) remains “a possibility,” even if at
present that is not juridically possible, he remarked.
The speaker then
went on to discuss the successes and failures of the ICTY. Everyone now knows
that international criminal justice is possible, he noted with satisfaction. To
back up that idea, he gave some figures: since the creation of the ICTY, 161
persons have been indicted for serious violations of international humanitarian
law on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, 48 of the accused are still
undergoing trial, 113 trials have been concluded, with 9 acquittals, 55 persons
sentenced and 19 persons having served their sentence. However, the ICTY has not
succeeded in acting as a deterrent against crimes, noted Mr Bourgon with regret,
recalling that the Court had not succeeding in setting up an accelerated
procedure. He also listed some of the challenges facing international criminal
justice. Firstly, the courts are under pressure owning to the excessive length
of the trials. Thus there is a need to give consideration to shortening them,
without thereby sacrificing the rights of all persons to have a fair trial. It
is also necessary to bolster the trust of the military community in
international criminal justice. Soldiers need to be aware that even in wartime,
they must observe the rules. If they do not, prosecution will follow, said Mr
Bourgon.
Finally, he took the view that the revelations of the
previous prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia (ICTY), Carla Del Ponte, had come at an “inopportune” moment, as she
had just ended her term of office. In a book which had come out in April, Ms Del
Ponte, now the Swiss ambassador to Argentina, revealed that she had carried out
investigations into allegations of trafficking in organs taken from the corpses
of 300 prisoners in the hands of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in
2003.
THE AFGHAN ARMY CALLS
FOR MORE RESOURCES TO BUILD UP CAPACITY – NATO REQUESTS MORE
TROOPS
BERLIN, 26 May 2008 – The Afghan National army (ANA)
needs a greater level of help from the international community if it is to be
able to ensure the security of the country, said General Sher Mohammad Karimi,
Head of Operations at the Afghan Ministry of Defence last Sunday, speaking at
the Spring Session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (NATO PA). “Even
with the coalition troops, Afghan army numbers remain far short of its strategic
role (…) We cannot achieve security without additional forces,” said
General Karimi, addressing the participants in the NATO PAÂ’s Defence and
Security Committee. “Meeting our national objective for a larger and wholly
independent army will require additional funds from Afghan economic growth or
from international community donors,” he added, drawing attention to the
intention of his Government to increase the manpower of the ANA from 70,000 to
80,000 by the end of 2009.
In his view, increasing the enrolment of the ANA will have to
go hand-in-hand with a global threat analysis and with structural improvements
within the army. He also stressed the need for all the forces on the ground to
be better coordinated and to share information to a greater degree in order to
improve the effectiveness of operations and reduce casualty levels. During his
presentation, General Karimi also expressed disappointment that a significant
share of the external resources provided to Afghanistan were sent directly to
locations where projects were under way rather than being provided to the
Government, which was best-placed to decide where aid would be beneficial to
reconstruction. “There is poor utilization of the development assistance
funds,” he observed. Moreover, the lack of multi-year planning of financial
commitments on the part of the donors meant that it was not possible for the
Government to plan for the future.
The ANA and NATOÂ’s
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) – comprising 49,000 soldiers –
have the task of ensuring the security of 32 million people over an area of
647,500 square kilometres. The objective is to reach a point at which the ANA
will be able to carry out operations independently of the ISAF, whose role will
then progressively change into one of advice and training. Responding to a
question from the Dutch parliamentarian Tiny Kox on the outcome of the military
campaign currently in progress, General Karimi said firmly: “I have not the
least doubt that we will achieve a military victory.” The Head of the Delegation
from the Afghan House of the People, Khalid Pashtoon, asked the speaker for his
views on the establishment of a second military academy in the south of the
country, where the principal language spoken is Pashto, by contrast with the
north where the language most used is Dari. “There should indeed be an academy
in Kandahar to train military personnel in their own language. This is a
question to be resolved on the political level,” was General Karimi’s reply.
With regard to the fight against narcotics, he pointed out that that task did
not fall within the remit of the ANA but of the Afghan National Police. On the
other hand, the army will be able to protect the police as it undertakes
missions to destroy poppy crops. A specialist battalion will be ready to
undertake such a mission in Helmand province as soon as it has received the
necessary equipment, such as assault weapons and vehicles.
For his
part, Air Marshal Christopher Moran, Deputy Commander Allied Joint Force Command
Brunssum, told the parliamentarians that NATO needed troop reinforcements
because of the violent insurrection in the country, and in particular in the
south. “We are short three infantry battalions if we are to secure the south,”
he stressed. “We also have to reduce national caveats as far as possible,” he
went on. Supporting the remarks of General Karimi, the Air Marshal stated that
the international community should supply more funds so that the action
undertaken could have concrete results on the ground, but also that the money
should be initially supplied to, and pass through, the Afghan
Government.
Air Marshal Moran also announced that the ANA will
begin taking control of the Kabul region in the coming August, the intention
being to conclude this transfer of authority in early 2009. In his view, in
order to develop the country, there are still other challenges to be overcome:
better coordination of the organizations present on the ground (NATO, NGOs, UN),
battling drugs and corruption, curbing the rate of unemployment (60%),
reconciliation, and also the “food battle” (rising prices, poor harvests). While
the Head of the Lithuanian Delegation, Rasa Jukneviciene, expressed her concern
with regard to the increase in the number of civilians killed during operations,
Air Marshal Moran insisted that NATO was doing its best to avoid this type of
error. “The civilian victims are primarily the responsibility of the Taliban,”
he explained.
MORE
WOMEN ON THE FRONT LINES
BERLIN, 25 MAY, For
the third time in a row, the session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly was a
forum for discussion of the question of women within the armed forces. This
lunchtime discussion was hosted by the Canadian Delegation to the NATO PA, this
past Sunday, 25 May, and was attended by some sixty participants.
Chaired by Senator Jane Cordy, the discussion had the aim of
drawing the attention of the parliamentarians to the need to boost the presence
of women on the front lines of peacekeeping missions. In the view of Charlotte
Isaksson, a specialist in this issue in the Swedish army, taking gender into
account is an essential step in the preparatory phase of any military
deployment. Too many operations already under way lack an “overall vision” and
the question of women is still very often neglected in the drawing up of
operational plans. However in practice, the speaker observed that there was a
more marked awareness in the chains of command of how essential it was to
have women in the troops. Women obtain “better results” not only when talking to
women and girls on the ground but also when dealing with the natural hostility
of the local populations with regard to foreign armed troops. She cited the
repeated calls by General Patrick Nash of Ireland, Commander of EUFOR Chad-CAR,
for more women to be deployed on the ground. In the Congo as well, where Ms
Isaksson was an adviser to EUFOR, the officers had come to realize the
importance of a female presence within the armed forces. A large number of
training exercises were organized and the number of female military personnel on
the ground increased.
The speaker stressed
that, despite the ongoing shortfalls and thanks to these training
exercises, senior officers have become aware of the implications of this issue
and have acquired a better understanding of United Nations resolution 1325. It
will be recalled that this resolution mentions explicitly the effects of armed
conflicts on women and girls and highlights the importance of the participation
of women in peace processes.
Taking a pragmatic approach, Anja
Ebnoether, Deputy Director at the DCAF (Centre for the Democratic Control of
Armed Forces, Geneva) presented a number of documents published by the DCAF,
intended to improve understanding of the gender issue and to adapt this concept
to each post-conflict situation. She also described the enormous difficulties
encountered in recruiting women into the Afghan National Police and the efforts
of the international community to resolve the problem. She called on the
parliamentarians present to spare no effort to make their own assemblies
aware of the need to establish policies within their countryÂ’s army on this
issue. During the subsequent debate, reference was made to the difficulty of
recruiting women, while at the same time attention was drawn to the efforts of
Hungary, France and Spain, whose female enrolment numbers have doubled since the
beginning of the millennium.
The NATO Parliamentary Assembly is an interparliamentary
organization,
independent from NATO, which provides a link between NATO and
the
parliaments of its member countries. The Assembly also brings
together
legislators from NATO member and non-member countries to
consider
security-related issues of common interest and
concern.
End of mail