Durham, N.C. - Carla Del Ponte, prosecutor in the trial of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, will discuss the future of international criminal courts during a talk next week at Duke.

Del Ponte is the former attorney general of Switzerland, who was the target of an assassination attempt after her investigation into the mafia. (A colleague with whom she was working was killed.) She was appointed in 1999 by the U.N. Security Council to serve as prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals.

Last month she gave a preview of her talk in an interview with Robin Kirk of the Duke Human Rights Initiative:

Kirk: Given your experience with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, what do you see as the future of regional or country-based tribunals? What do you see as the principle accomplishment of the ICTY and the work that remains to be done in the former Yugoslavia?

Del Ponte: Here we have three serious questions in one. Clearly, the first one is dealing with the dilemma between a permanent Court and ad hoc court, or what you describe as a regional tribunal. For me, obviously, there is no such dilemma - I think that both ad hoc Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda have been created in a timely fashion and with good purpose.

While in terms of the universality of international criminal justice, it is important to have and support the permanent court, meaning the International Criminal Court. Yet we cannot say that ad hoc and regional will not also continue to serve well the purpose of immediate and targeted attention to a particular crisis.

The principle accomplishment of the ICTY and the ICTR is in terms of the most important lesson - that there should be no impunity for the political and military leaders who are responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law.

Finally, for the successful completion of our work, we need to obtain the arrests of all remaining fugitives, finalise in time the scheduled trials and also assist the national courts in taking over some of our cases and in launching domestic war crimes prosecutions.

Del Ponte will speak at 2 p.m. Saturday, April 9, in the Rare Book Room of Perkins Library. Seating is limited.