THE verdict reached yesterday by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague is a landmark in the history of international law. Dusan Tadic, a Bosnian Serb, was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed at the prison camps of Omarksa, Keraterm and Trnopolje in 1992. Tadic, who pleaded innocent, has appealed against his conviction. This could delay sentencing beyond the proposed date of July 1.
The Bosnian government has expressed disappointment that there was insufficient evidence to convict Tadic of nine murder charges. It has also pointed out that he was a minor player in a programme of ethnic cleansing directed by Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb president, and General Ratko Mladic, his military commander. The last two have been indicted for war crimes by the court but remain at large. The extreme reluctance of Nato-led forces in Bosnia -Hercegovina to take steps to apprehend them means that things are likely to stay that way.
Since it was set up in 1993, the court's achievements have been unimpressive. Drazen Erdemovic, a Croat, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1996 after pleading guilty to war crimes. Of the 74 people who have been indicted, only eight have been arrested. Four - three Muslims and a Croat - are being tried. The trial of the most important detainee to date, the Croat General Tihomir Blaskic, is pending. Progress made by the other war crimes tribunal, investigating the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, has been somewhat better. Of 24 indictees, 13 are in custody. The trials of four people have begun in Arusha, Tanzania, and those of four others are expected to begin later this year.
Whatever the difficulties of apprehending suspects and securing convictions, the working of the two courts represents an important extension of the United Nations mandate to maintain peace and security. The tribunals that tried the German and Japanese leaders after the Second World War were set up by the victorious allies. Those in The Hague and Arusha were established by UN Security Council resolutions and thus can be said to embody the will of the international community as a whole.
Despite obvious weaknesses, their very existence sends a warning to would-be practitioners of genocide and ethnic cleansing that they cannot act with impunity. (Messrs Karadzic and Mladic may not be in detention, but their freedom of movement is severely restricted.) As such, they qualify as one of the most promising fruits of the post-Cold War era.
