P R E S S   R E L E A S E

For immediate release : 3 December, 1996

"Bring War Criminals to Justice or Dayton Will Fail"

The International Crisis Group (ICG) today issued a report warning that the Bosnian peace process will break down unless immediate action is taken to bring those indicted for war crimes to justice. The report urges the leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and the United States�who will gather in London on Wednesday and Thursday of this week for a meeting of the Peace Implementation Conference�to tackle the issue head on and without delay.

In the report, ICG, a private, multinational organisation which is monitoring implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement, twins its warning with a set of practical proposals to get the crisis-hit Bosnian peace process back on track.

Announcing the report�s findings, Nicholas Hinton, president of ICG, said: "A window of opportunity remains ajar in Bosnia, but unless the international community takes swift and resolute action, the peace agreement concluded a little over a year ago at Dayton will be remembered not as the basis for a lasting peace but as the most expensive cease-fire in history.

"While the Dayton Peace Agreement brought an end to fighting in Bosnia, it has not resolved the underlying causes of the 43-month conflict. Critically, the cycle of impunity, which characterised war in the former Yugoslavia, has not been broken and indicted war criminals remain at large, free to undermine efforts to put Bosnia back together."

Under Dayton, the Parties to the agreement�Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia�are supposed to arrest and surrender all indictees resident within their territories to the International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. To date only seven out of 75 have been detained. Nicholas Hinton said: "Since the Parties to the Dayton Peace Agreement have refused to hand over indictees to The Hague Tribunal, it is now time that the Nato-led force in Bosnia took the initiative."

In the past, the Nato-led Implementation force (IFOR) has repeatedly said it will not stage manhunts for indictees, explaining that it will apprehend them only if encountered in the course of normal duties. But in its latest report, ICG urges the leaders of troop-contributing nations to instruct their troops to seek out and arrest the most notorious indicted war criminals. The report also urges those same countries to make additional resources available to the War Crimes Tribunal, including funds, equipment and seconded staff, to ensure that justice prevails.

Another key theme of the ICG report is the need to attach tighter strings to the granting of reconstruction aid. In the past year, under the auspices of the World Bank, a framework for investment has been put in place which is already jump-starting the economy in the Muslim-Croat Federation and could do the same in Republika Srpska. Since the bulk of the billions of dollars necessary to reconstruct Bosnia comes in the form of grants, the international community is well-placed to use economic assistance as a tool to achieve compliance with the Dayton Peace Agreement.

ICG believes that the international community should withhold all aid from any municipality, entity or country harbouring indicted war criminals until key indictees are handed over for trial. Once the most prominent indictees have been surrendered and satisfactory assurances of future co-operation with the Tribunal have been provided, a substantial and visible aid package should kick in immediately. Even after an aid package has begun to be implemented, the international community should continue to use economic assistance as a political tool and link investment to the reintegration of all displaced persons. Put simply: the more returnees, the more money; no returnees, no money.

Full details of ICG�s recommendations are contained in the accompanying report Aid and Accountability: Dayton Implementation.