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THE HAGUE, Aug 25 (AFP) - UN war crimes tribunal president Gabrielle Kirk McDonald on Wednesday reported Croatia to the UN Security Council for non-cooperation with the tribunal.
The formal accusation came in a letter addressed to the Security Council president and copied to Zvonimir Separovic, Croatia's minister of justice.
The letter asks the Security Council to "provide the support necessary to enable the International Tribunal to discharge its mandate," and to "take measures that are sufficiently compelling to bring the Republic of Croatia into compliance with its obligations under international law."
"The reasons for making this request are two-fold. First the refusal of the Republic of Croatia to recognise the International Tribunal's jurisdiction over alleged criminal activity occurring during and in the aftermath of 'Operation Flash' and 'Operation Storm'," McDonald wrote.
In these two operations (also referred to as "Operation Lightning" and "Operation Tempest") the Croatian army retook possession of Serbian secessionist territory.
The government in Zagreb has so far refused to comply with this request from the prosecutor's office of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on the grounds of "national security".
"Second, the continuing refusal of the Republic of Croatia to surrender and transfer Mladen Naletilic (a.k.a.'Tuta'), who has been indicted by the International Tribunal," McDonald's letter continued.
Croatia handed over Naletilic's co-indictee Vinko Martinovic, alias Stela, on August 9, and released various documents, after repeated appeals by the ICTY's chief prosecutor Louise Arbour.
Despite these gestures from Zagreb, Arbour insisted that Croatia comply with all ICTY demands and refused to withdraw her request to the ICTY president to report the Republic of Croatia.
She urged Croatia to hand over a Bosnian Croat co-suspect, Mladen Naletilic, so the two could be tried together, and there are still 13 outstanding requests for assistance, some dating back as far as 1996.
UN member states are obliged to cooperate with the ICTY on the basis of the tribunal's original UN mandate, dating from 1993.
At Martinovic's initial appearance before the ICTY, he entered a plea of not guilty to charges of crimes against humanity against him, for allegedly organizing a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" in the region during 1993-94.