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U.S. vetoes Bosnia mission to protest
new world court
By MARCUS GEE
Monday, July 1, 2002 - Page A1
Showing once again that it is
willing to defy international
opinion and go it alone in the
world, Washington tried to pull
the plug last night on the UN-mandated peacekeeping mission in
Bosnia, fearing that U.S. soldiers might be arrested by the new
international criminal court.
The quarrel over the ICC's powers overshadowed what advocates
called a historic moment in world affairs: the creation by the
United Nations of the first-ever permanent court to try war
criminals and human-rights abusers.
The court came into effect at midnight.
Washington, which wants its peacekeepers to have immunity
from arrest and prosecution by the new court, defied the other
members of the 15-member Security Council and cast its veto
over the extension of the Bosnian mission.
Under a last-minute compromise, the council will have three more
days to defuse the quarrel and continue the mission's mandate,
which would have expired at midnight without the deal.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which leads the
18,000-strong mission, said it will be able to continue with the
mission regardless of the outcome, since its mandate comes
from the 1995 peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia.
Others, though, noted that the world body's capacity to continue
its peacekeeping efforts could be jeopardized when other UN
peacekeeping mandates come up for renewal.
ICC advocates, meanwhile, said the U.S. opposition casts a pall
over the court's future and demonstrates Washington's tendency
toward unilateralism.
"The U.S. is trying to cripple the child at birth, and that is
certainly taking away from the tremendous sense of achievement
that Canada and other world democracies deserve for this truly
historical achievement," said William Pace, head of the Coalition
for an International Criminal Court.
"I can't believe how reckless the Bush administration has been.
They're playing Russian roulette with the UN charter."
U.S. President George W. Bush's administration argues that
politically motivated prosecutors for the new court could go
after U.S. officials or soldiers serving abroad, in peacekeeping
missions, for example.
But ICC proponents, including U.S. allies such as Canada, Britain
and France, say immunity for Americans would be unfair to other
countries and would erode the court's stature.
Disputes have swirled around the ICC since its founding at a
conference in Rome in 1998.
After five weeks of intense negotiations, 120 countries voted to
establish the court, with a mandate to try crimes ranging from
genocide and torture to enslavement and "disappearance."
The United States was one of seven countries that refused to
vote for the court then, saying it fears the ICC could trample on
U.S. national sovereignty and conduct witch-hunts against its
officials.
The court's defenders argue that the Rome treaty contains a
host of provisions to prevent such abuses.
The ICC, they note, will not take the place of national courts. It
will act only when national courts are unwilling to do so.
The court is forbidden to prosecute crimes that take place on
the territory of a country that has not ratified it, such as the
United States, unless that country gives its consent.
The Security Council can delay prosecutions for 12 months at a
time, provided all five permanent members agree to the deferral.
To guard against frivolous or politically motived prosecutions, a
pretrial chamber of judges would review any indictments before
they are issued.
"We're very surprised and concerned that the United States has
continued to try to obtain these back-door exemptions, because
there are already so many safeguards against abuses," said Fiona
McKay, director of international justice program for the Lawyers
Committee for Human Rights in New York.
None of this has calmed U.S. skepticism. Former president Bill
Clinton belatedly signed the treaty in the dying days of his
presidency, but Mr. Bush's administration said in May that it
would renounce the U.S. signature and have nothing more to do
with the ICC.
American critics of the ICC point out that although U.S. citizens
could not be prosecuted for crimes committed in the United
States as long as Washington had not signed the treaty, they
could be prosecuted for crimes they commit in other countries --
for example, while serving on military missions overseas.
With that concern, the U.S. Congress is preparing a law that
would forbid the government to co-operate with the court and
would authorize the U.S. president to use "all means necessary
and appropriate" to free Americans held by the court. ICC
defenders call it "the Hague-invasion law."
Those same defenders point out that, despite the U.S. opposition,
more than 70 countries have ratified the court treaty, including
all 15 members of the European Union and most of the world's
major democracies.
Irwin Cotler, a Liberal MP from Montreal and a well-known expert
on international law, said that he was "tremendously moved" by
the birth of the ICC.
Prof. Cotler said the creation of the ICC follows an "age of
atrocity," the 20th century, in which those who carried out mass
murder and other atrocities often paid no price.
"The coming into force of the ICC is long overdue," he said. "This
will serve as a wake-up call to international perpetrators
everywhere that there will be no safe haven."
Although the ICC opens its doors officially today in temporary
quarters on the outskirts of The Hague in the Netherlands, it has
no judges, prosecutors, permanent staff or budget.
In September, ratifying countries will meet in New York to draw
up a budget, then meet in January to elect a chief prosecutor and
18 judges. The court should be up and running by the end of
2003.
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