Officials to visit international tribunal

Rwandan officials are to travel to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in Arusha, Tanzania, to observe the trials and discuss strained relations between their government and the ICTR.

Rwandan Minister of Justice Jean de Dieu Mucyo, Prosecutor General Gerard Gahima and President of the Supreme Court Simeon Rwagasore would spend two or three days in Arusha, probably after the first week of November, the ICTR chief of press and public affairs, Tom Kennedy, told IRIN on Friday. They would be met by the ICTR president, Adama Dieng, and the chief prosecutor, Carla del Ponte.

Relations had been "a bit off" between the government of Rwanda and the ICTR since the beginning of the year, Kennedy said, adding that "dialogue is the best way to recover the situation".

A letter to the UN Security Council, released on 2 August, from ICTR President Judge Navanethem Pillay said that Carla Del Ponte had complained of a lack of cooperation from the Rwandan authorities, describing how the lack of availability of witnesses from Rwanda was likely to hamper the court's judicial work and the prosecutor's investigations.

In particular, the letter accused the Rwandan authorities of failure to issue travel documents for witnesses in a timely manner to enable them to appear in ongoing trials. Tribunal judges had expressed concern, because three cases had already been postponed several times due to the unavailability of witnesses from Rwanda, Pillay said.

In a nine-page response, Rwanda accused the Tribunal of "a crisis of management, incompetence and corruption of its own making", saying it wished "to challenge the attempt by the Prosecutor to point to Rwanda as the cause of the crisis and not to the Tribunal itself".

"In view of false accusations and deliberate misrepresentations", Rwanda said it was "compelled to reply and put forward recommendations to the Security Council".

To date no resolution had been taken by the Security Council on this matter, Kennedy confirmed, adding that the ICTR registrar, president and prosecutor had been in New York's UN headquarters since last week and that discussions on the matter were ongoing.