Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor in
the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the UN war crimes tribunal, is to visit the Bosnian Serb capital of Banja Luka tomorrow, her spokeswoman told
AFP
.
Speaking by telephone from Zagreb, spokeswoman Florence Hartmann said the Swiss-born prosecutor would make the visit despite the continuation tomorrow of Mr Milosevic's trial for war crimes and genocide.
"The tribunal has other duties apart from the Slobodan Milosevic trial," Ms Hartmann said.
Ms Del Ponte is expected to urge the Bosnian Serb authorities to start arresting war crimes suspects living on its territory.
There are currently more than 20 Bosnian Serbs on the run who have been indicted for war crimes by the UN tribunal in The Hague, including wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic.
The Bosnian peace deal signed in 1995 obliges the country's authorities to arrest all publicly indicted war crimes suspects and hand them over to the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
But more than six years after the end of the 1992-95 war, the indictees remain at large.
The international community has been putting pressure on the authorities in Banja Luka to arrest the suspects but the Bosnian Serb police have not arrested any so far, despite the introduction of a law last October allowing the government to cooperate with the ICTY and detain war crimes suspects.
Like former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, Mr Karadzic and Mr Mladic are accused by the UN court of involvement in the slaughter of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in July 1995.
AFP