Herzegovina, Dec 2, SPA -- The chief prosecutor of the U.N. war crimes tribunal arrived in Sarajevo on Thursday to visit a recently established court that will try war crimes cases here next year. Carla Del Ponte and Bosnia's top international administrator, Paddy Ashdown, will meet the Court of Bosnia's president, Medzida Kreho and chief prosecutor, Marinko Jurcevic. They will review reconstruction work on the infrastructure needed to start war crimes trials in the Court's Special War Crimes Chamber. "The court is a key element of the reform of the rule of law in Bosnia," Ashdown's office said in a statement. The Court has a mandate to deal with war crimes and the most serious organized crime cases. In January, Bosnia is supposed to begin prosecuting suspected war criminals from the 1992-95 Balkans wars, during which an estimated 250,000 people were killed and 1.8 million were displaced. Bosnia has approved the creation of a war-crimes chamber to handle lower level cases, while the U.N. war crimes tribunal based in The Hague, Netherlands will continue to deal with senior political and military officials, including former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The U.N. tribunal in The Hague is supposed to transfer cases to the Bosnian judicial system for trial next year. The Bosnian court is to operate with funds donated by the United States and other countries, including Japan. The U.N. tribunal is under pressure to wind up prosecutions in The Hague by 2008 and be ready to close by 2010. The court was set up in 1993 by the U.N. Security Council.
