Serbian justice minister meets UN tribunal president, prosecutor

Kuburovic is in New York to attend the UN Security Council session at which the International Residual Mechanism for CriminalTribunals (IRMCT) will submit a report on cooperation with the countries of the former Yugoslavia.

Speaking during the meeting in New York, Meron said he agreed to the transfer of those inmates to other countries and welcomed Serbia’s positive view of the forming of an Information Center in Belgrade to allow access to Hague Tribunal archives which is currently being set up.

Kuburovic had a separate meeting with former ICTY and now IRMCT chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz to discuss his report.

The press release quotes Kuburovic as saying that Serbia has significantly upgraded the capabilities of its war crimes prosecution to secure all required conditions for efficient processing of the worst crimes against humanity, regardless of nationality or ethnicity.

Brammertz is reported to have said that his latest report stresses the lack of regional cooperation in processing war crimes before local courts in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia, that the glorification of persons convicted of war crimes is unacceptable and that all the countries have to focus on finding missing persons.

Kuburovic voiced disagreement with claims that there is no regional cooperation, adding that Serbia regularly responds to requests from Croatia and Bosnia but that those two countries do not show the same readiness to respond to Serbia’s requests.

She said that the memoirs of Yugoslav Army (VJ) General and convicted war criminal Nebojsa Pavkovic do not deserve to be fiercely criticized by the prosecutor or the mechanism especially since there was no such criticism in the cases of accused war criminals Naser Oric and Slobodan Praljak, the press release said.