Tyrants strut on world stage with impunity no longer

When the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Laurent Kabila, prepared for a trip to Europe last November he sent an advance party to Belgium, his first stop, to seek assurances that there would be no nasty surprises waiting - specifically, no arrest warrant.

Kabila, who seized power in a long march to Kinshasa in 1997 and who has resisted all efforts to investigate how many lives have been lost in massacres along the way, is now, like President Slobodan Milosevic, living in the post-Pinochet era. Dictators, whether in or out of office, can no longer strut their stuff on the world stage with impunity. Last year, the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was a remarkable year for human rights, despite setbacks in Congo, Kosovo, Algeria and other troubled areas. Apart from Britain's landmark decision to extradite Pinochet, international tribunals for the Balkans and Rwanda have been handing down sentences, including the first convictions for rape as a war crime.

And last June a treaty established the first International Criminal Court, a permanent body on call to deal with rogue leaders in a systematic way, so that tyrants like the late Pol Pot would not pose a jurisdictional problem if caught. Now the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has set its sights on Milosevic. Under international law, an indictment and arrest warrant issued by the tribunal compels any UN member-state to arrest Milosevic should he arrive on its soil. The court's prosecutor is the Canadian judge Louise Arbour, tipped to return shortly to take a seat in the Canadian Supreme Court. Her role is set out in the statute which defines the tribunal's authority to prosecute four clusters of offences:

Grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions;

Violations of the laws or customs of war;

Genocide;

Crimes against humanity. Since the ICTY's inception in 1993, 84 individuals have been publicly indicted in 25 indictments. Six accused have died, charges were dropped against 18 others, one is serving his sentence, another has completed his sentence, and a third was acquitted. Currently, 58 accused people are pending arrest - including the Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic - or pending completion of the proceedings, in 22 indictments.

Observers say the court's very existence and extensive powers have already had an impact within former Yugoslavia. And NATO officials admit one reason for raising the war crimes issue is to try to drive a wedge between Milosevic and his field commanders, who may also fear prosecution on similar charges.

Drawing lessons from their slow progress in investigating war crimes in Bosnia and Croatia, the tribunal recently shifted strategy in its work on Kosovo.

The decision to indict Milosevic had been expected, but not so soon. Only last month prosecutors were complaining that even as Western political leaders were promising to provide detailed evidence to the court, the tribunal found itself hampered by a lack of information about the Yugoslav high command that only government agencies can supply, like orders issued to commit atrocities.

In many cases, such orders can be best documented through classified intelligence, like electronic surveillance, that governments have either been reluctant to share or have hesitated to allow to be presented in open court because of their fear of exposing intelligence-gathering methods.

"In the past we have been given leads and intelligence, and then we go back to the source and say we'd like to use this in the courtroom," the tribunal's deputy prosecutor, Graham Blewitt, told journalists in April. "Then they say no, because they do not want to expose their intelligence-gathering methods or compromise their sources."

Since then the US and the British have stepped up their co-operation with the court, the latter even appointing a special war crimes co-ordinator to funnel evidence to prosecutors.

Even the French, traditionally sceptical of any international tribunals - like the US, they fear their soldiers might one day end up indicted - appear more willing to co-operate. Gen Philippe Morillon, the former commander of UN forces in Bosnia, is now expected to testify soon before the court.

Diplomats here and in the US are sceptical of fears, widely reported yesterday, that the prosecution of Milosevic will impede peace negotiations. They point to the reality that both Karadzic and Mladic had been indicted prior to the Dayton peace conference.

A delegation of US officials had met them before the conference. It was led by Richard Holbrooke, then the State Department official in charge of ending the war in Bosnia.

"I felt deeply uncomfortable about the prospect of sitting down with indicted war criminals," he wrote in his recent book about the negotiations, To End a War. "But in the end I decided it was justifiable under the circumstances. I did not shake hands, although both Karadzic and Mladic tried to."