Ian Traynor

More war crimes suspects are arriving in the Hague every month as the tribunal finally reaches critical mass after years of struggle and controversy. A further 18 have been released pending trial, while 56 have served or are serving jail terms elsewhere. “It’s quite a complicated place because of the different problems it generates,” says MacFadden.

There has seldom been a jailhouse like the five floors of well-appointed, high-security cells stewarded by the laid-back Irish officer. The average age is 52, old for a male prison population, and the detainees currently include a former head of state, a former prime minister, a former interior minister, a former defense minister and a bunch of former army chiefs of staff and intelligence chiefs.

Inside the detention unit MacFadden has mixed nationalities and former ethnic enemies in a hotchpotch of Serbs, Croats, Muslims, Macedonians and Albanians on each floor in a deliberate strategy to prevent national, political or military organization among the inmates.

“It’s very rare that there are any ethnic tensions,” says MacFadden of the collection of war crimes suspects held responsible for unleashing eight years of ethnic bloodletting that left about 200,000 people dead and broke Yugoslavia into five states. “These are not habitual criminals. They have no previous experience of being detained. Many held senior positions in public life.”

The reason for MacFadden’s full house is that the tribunal is going through a period of unparalleled success in getting its hands on inductees, many of whom have been on the run for years.

“This is without doubt the most active and productive period in the life of the tribunal thus far, a period full of challenges, stresses and strains,” Judge Theodor Meron, president of the tribunal, said in a letter to the U.N. Security Council this week.

Twenty men, many of them very senior officials, have arrived at Amsterdam’s Chisholm airport this year to face international justice in the Hague. Several had vowed no surrender, had gone into hiding and had been protected by powerful political and mafia networks, but have now given themselves up through coercion, desperation or bribery.

“You offer [the inductees] attractive packages and you make the alternative not very attractive,” explains Jim Lansdale, tribunal spokesman.

A year ago the tribunal’s wanted list of fugitives ran to 21 men. As a result of the surrenders it has shrunk to 10. However, the three biggest names remain at large — Gen. Ante Gotovina of Croatia and the Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic.

The sudden success for Carla del Ponte, the tribunal’s aggressive chief prosecutor, is evident at the three trial chambers a couple of miles from the remand center. For the first time since the tribunal was established by the U.N. in 1993 the courts are working at full capacity, running six trials every week.

Success also brings problems. At Washington’s insistence, the court is scheduled to conclude all trials by 2008, but this week the tribunal said it would not meet the deadline.

The big change has come in Belgrade, where the Serbian prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, has abandoned years of virulent hostility to the tribunal and where his powerful security chief, Rade Bulatovic, is twisting the arms of suspects to hand themselves over and make life easier internationally for Serbia.

The U-turn has also been forced by dramatic revelations such as the film footage shown last week of Serbian paramilitaries summarily executing Muslim prisoners in Bosnia in 1995. The other shift has been a rare and successful application of concerted pressure on Kostunica from the European Union after a long and sorry history of E.U. divisions and failures in former Yugoslavia.

“There has been a sea change and the main factor is a fundamental change of attitude in Belgrade,” says Jean-Daniel Ruche, political advisor to del Ponte. “This is the first time that we’ve seen the E.U. as the driving force. It’s new and it’s good. Kostunica knows that he has no choice but to move toward Europe. And he also now knows that the road to Brussels runs through the Hague.”

In April, for example, Germany kept up the pressure on the Serbian government until the very last minute of an E.U. decision on the first stage of membership negotiations with Serbia-Montenegro. The result was the “surrender” of Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, the former army chief indicted two years ago for alleged war crimes in Kosovo.

But war crimes investigators are troubled by suspicions that Pavkovic and other prominent Serbs who have recently turned themselves in have been paid large sums of money to do so. One investigator, convinced that large sums are being paid out in Belgrade, said it was “disgusting and outrageous.” Another said: “Morally it’s very dubious, but legally there’s no rule against it.”

Carla del Ponte is said to be pragmatic on the matter. According to one official, she takes the view: “We’re interested in results. I don’t care how they come here as long as I get them.”

Inspectors at the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency have been investigating the worst nuclear-smuggling racket ever uncovered, headed by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. The operation was discovered two years ago to be selling sensitive nuclear technology to Libya and Iran.

A senior official said several sets of blueprints for uranium centrifuges — the so-called P-1 and more advanced P-2 systems that were peddled by the Khan network — have gone missing. “We know there were several sets of them prepared,” said the official. “So who got those electronic drawings? We have only actually got to the one full set from Libya. So who got the rest, the copies? We have no evidence they were destroyed. One possibility is another client. We just don’t know where they are.”

A European diplomat privy to Western intelligence on the Khan network added: “This is what keeps people awake at night. It’s very sensitive. The fact that there are [nuclear] proliferation manuals kicking around is deeply disturbing.”

The blueprints detail how to manufacture the components for a uranium centrifuge, what materials are needed, how to assemble the machines and how to test them. The centrifuges are the main route to producing bomb-grade uranium. Uranium concentrate is converted into uranium hexafluoride gas, which can be spun through cascades of centrifuges at super-high speeds to be enriched to weapons grade.

“The big question is who else got this stuff [apart from Iran and Libya],” the European diplomat said.

Another diplomat pointed out that the Khan network is based in the Middle East and that Khan is known as the father of the Islamic bomb. He suggested that Syria and Egypt could be potential customers for the materials if they were still being offered.

Khan is a national hero for creating the Pakistani nuclear bomb, but has been under house arrest in Islamabad since confessing to heading the network and being pardoned in February of last year. Although the network’s operations extended to Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Far East, its headquarters were in Dubai. Khan maintained a luxury apartment in Dubai.

Following the uncovering of the network in October 2003, investigators went to the Dubai apartment only to find that it had been emptied, apparently by Khan’s daughter Dina.

Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi confessed to his secret nuclear bomb program and gave it up in December 2003. Three months later in Tripoli, U.N. inspectors were given two CD-ROMs and one computer hard drive. One CD contained a set of drawings and manuals for the P-1 centrifuge system, the other for the more advanced P-2.

The instructions are in English, Dutch and German, and the designs are from Urenco, the Dutch-British-German consortium that is a leader in centrifuge technology and is the source of Khan’s know-how from his time working there in the 1970s. The CDs and hard drive are at IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, where they have been analyzed. The investigators now know that the scanning of the original blueprints was done in Dubai and when.

In addition to these blueprints, Khan also supplied Libya with drawings for an old Chinese nuclear warhead design. The drawings, now in Washington under IAEA seal, were not complete, say sources, but were adequate to construct a crude nuclear device.

Investigators suspect that the warhead design was also copied into electronic form and is still available to prospective clients. “There is reason to believe that there might even be some drawings related to nuclear weaponization in electronic form,” said the senior official.

It is now also clear that multiple components secretly made for Libya’s $100 million centrifuge program did not reach Libya and have gone missing.

From their investigations of the nuclear programs in Libya and Iran, the IAEA has concluded that pieces of the nuclear jigsaw have not been located. “We are still missing something from the picture in terms of critical equipment, certain parts of centrifuges … There is equipment missing important enough for us to search, an amount that makes us worried,” said the official.

Around a dozen individuals, including engineers, businessmen and middlemen, were key figures in the Khan network, with dozens of other companies operating at a secondary level, according to those familiar with the investigation. Alleged Khan associates have been arrested in the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, South Africa, Dubai and Malaysia, although none of those cases has yet come to full trial. British customs is also conducting an investigation into a British suspect.

The prospects for a settlement that will satisfy all parties look slim, but the make-or-break talks in Geneva salvaged a dialogue that was heading for collapse. Deadlock Wednesday could have paved the way for a more dangerous showdown between Iran and the West.

The agreement — if it sticks, and according to Western diplomats the Iranians are notoriously tricky negotiators, regularly “reinterpreting” what had been agreed to — means that Tehran should avoid being referred to the Security Council when the International Atomic Energy Agency has a board meeting in Vienna next month. In return, according to British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Tehran will maintain a freeze on all aspects of uranium enrichment.

The Iranians appear determined to restart processing raw uranium ore into uranium hexafluoride gas, the substance that is fed into high-speed centrifuges to be converted into nuclear fuel for power stations — or into fissile material for nuclear warheads. Iran insists that its purposes are purely peaceful, a claim that lacks credibility in Western capitals. Iran agreed with the E.U. trio last November to suspend the uranium enrichment while talks proceeded. It is now itching to resume the enrichment, and sounds disenchanted with the incentives being offered by the Europeans in return for a permanent suspension.

Hassan Rohani, the chief Iranian negotiator, said after three hours of talks in Geneva Wednesday that the Europeans had until the end of July to come up with a better, more concrete offer. Straw’s indication that the Iranian uranium enrichment freeze would remain in place was confirmed by Rohani. “We will remain committed to all our promises,” the Iranian said in reference to the freeze pledge last November. He sounded optimistic about a deal, saying that an agreement with the E.U. troika could be reached quickly. But his comments contrasted with more threatening statements being issued from Tehran.

The contradictory signals are expected to continue, as Iran is in the midst of a presidential election campaign. Diplomats do not expect a clear line to emerge on the nuclear crisis until it is clear who is the new Iranian president and what his options are.

There is also dissension within the Western camp, with Britain taking a hard line on the talks that is closer to the U.S. stance, Germany reluctant to go down the road of sanctions against Iran, and France in between. The Americans are pushing for Iran to be reported to the Security Council. With Germany suddenly plunged into an election campaign, the chances are bleaker that a concerted European hard line will prevail before September.

Wednesday’s talks were preceded by a meeting between European and American officials in Brussels on Tuesday and by recent talks between Straw and Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. secretary of state, at which the Americans signaled they would not accept any softening of the European stance.

The Iranians are recognized as being astute bargainers, exploiting every crack in the European position. As previously in the two-year game of diplomatic brinkmanship, Wednesday’s agreement suggests that a short-term truce has been reached before the battle is rejoined.

Wednesday night, a senior Iranian envoy flew to Vienna, Austria, home of the International Atomic Energy Agency, with a letter from his government that diplomats anticipated to be formal notification that Iran was reneging on the agreement to freeze its uranium enrichment activities. The Iranian leadership was reported to have met Wednesday in Tehran.

Diplomats said Iran could start breaking U.N. seals on nuclear technology as early as Thursday. Tehran has told the IAEA it will promptly inform the agency of the decision and a letter is expected by the end of the week.

The European troika, which has been negotiating with the Iranians since last November, when a deal was struck in Paris, is expected to summon an emergency meeting of the 35-strong IAEA board for next week, at which the Americans will push to have the dispute taken to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.

The Iranians are expected to restart conversion of raw uranium yellowcake into UF4 gas, a precursor to manufacturing UF6, which is turned into enriched uranium fuel. The degree of enrichment determines whether the fuel can be used for nuclear power stations or nuclear weapons.

The deal agreed to last Nov. 14 stipulated that Iran would freeze “all uranium enrichment-related activities.”

Tehran is expected to declare that the making of UF4 does not constitute a breach of that pledge, a claim that will not wash with the Europeans or the U.S. “Restarting conversion of uranium would be a clear breach of the agreement,” said the European diplomat.

If the Iranians resume the work at their uranium conversion plant in Isfahan, Iran, the resulting breakdown in E.U.-Iran talks will be the second in 18 months.

The E.U. states promised Iran that they would block a transfer of the dispute to the U.N. Security Council as long as there was a freeze on enrichment. But the Europeans also vowed to support Washington in referring the dispute to the Security Council should the talks fail. (On Thursday, Reuters reported, “the foreign ministers of the European Union’s three biggest powers sent a toughly worded letter to Hassan Rohani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, warning that resuming potentially arms-related nuclear work ‘would bring the negotiating process to an end.’”) This could make for another showdown next week in Vienna, with the United States and the E.U. for the first time united in calling for Security Council action.

Sources in Vienna said, however, that there was little appetite on the IAEA board for imposing penalties on Iran. The board generally operates by consensus. And a non-European diplomat said the nonaligned countries on the board would “accept the Iranian argument — that this is uranium conversion work and not enrichment work.”

Nor is it clear what would happen if the dispute were passed to The Security Council, where China and Russia could veto sanctions on Iran.

Uranium enrichment is the key to obtaining nuclear weapons. The E.U. talks are aimed at getting Iran to abandon uranium enrichment and instead import low-enriched nuclear fuel for Tehran’s civil nuclear program.

Recently Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time publicly supported the E.U.’s policy, saying that Iran should “abandon all technology to create a full nuclear fuel cycle” — meaning uranium enrichment.

An emergency meeting in Vienna next week would reinforce the sense of worsening crisis over the problem. But diplomats said there was little chance of a quick resolution and that the issue would likely be deferred until the next scheduled board meeting of the IAEA in mid-June, a few days before Iran’s presidential election.

The report denounces the U.N. administration of the southern province of Kosovo, calling for the Albanian-majority territory to be granted a form of independence. The loose union of Serbia and Montenegro in the common state helped into being two years ago by E.U. policymakers is also a failure and should be scrapped, the report says.

Criticizing most of the pillars of international policy in former Yugoslavia since the end of the Bosnia and Kosovo wars, the report calls on the E.U. to come up with a strategy to bring all the countries into the E.U. within a decade. “The international community and the E.U. in particular have been engaged in the Balkans to an extent which is unprecedented,” says the report, by the International Commission on the Balkans. “But despite the scale of the assistance effort, the international community has failed to offer a convincing political perspective to the societies in the region.

“The future of Kosovo is undecided, the future of Macedonia is uncertain, and the future of Serbia is unclear. We run the real risk of an explosion of Kosovo, an implosion of Serbia and new fractures in the foundations of Bosnia and Macedonia.”

The 65-page report is based on a 12-month study by the panel of Balkans experts and politicians, including six former prime ministers, headed by Giuliano Amato of Italy. The emphasis is on urging the E.U. to provide persuasive promises of membership to Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo and Bosnia.

Despite plowing billions into the region and Europe dispatching “almost half of its deployable forces” to the Balkans, the medium-term returns have been meager — “a mixture of weak states and international protectorates,” zero growth, pervasive corruption, high unemployment and public disaffection.

Although the report says that “a shift in international and Brussels thinking” is needed to break the impasse, Amato sounds pessimistic that Europe is up to the challenge. “Enlargement fatigue hovers over the European capitals these days,” he said. But if Brussels fails, the E.U. will become bogged down as a “neocolonial power” in Kosovo and Bosnia, the report warns. “The real choice the E.U. is facing in the Balkans is: enlargement or empire.” Lord Ashdown’s absolute powers in Bosnia should be scrapped, the report says, and his role should be taken by Brussels officials in charge of E.U. enlargement.

The most volatile flashpoint in the Balkans, however, is Kosovo, the status of which remains open six years after NATO drove Serbian forces out of the province. The U.N. mission “bears a substantial share of the blame for the failure in Kosovo … a failure which can be explained but should not be tolerated.”

The report says Kosovo should be made independent by next year, albeit with international officials still empowered to enforce minority and human rights. The expected fierce Serbian resistance to such proposals should be bought off with E.U. promises of membership for Belgrade. The report calls for an E.U.-Balkans summit next year aimed at producing “road maps” for each of the countries joining the E.U.