The UN General Assembly has elected a pool of 18 back-up judges to help speed the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which has come under fire for moving too slowly.
The UN tribunal was set up in 1995 to try major perpetrators of the 1994 genocide in which 800,000 Rwandans were killed, most of them minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.
Rwandan officials have accused the court, which is based in Arusha, Tanzania, and has 16 judges in a staff of more than 800, of taking too long to conduct trials.
Ms Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor for the UN tribunals on war crimes in both Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia has told the UN Security Council that Rwanda was slowing the court's work by refusing to cooperate with it.
The judges were elected to four-year terms and will begin serving on trials after the tribunal's summer recess.
