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| Bush’s administration “objects to the use of universal legal rules for governing international relations," Brimmer said. |
WASHINGTON,
July 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The U.S. risks criticism
for its showdown with the United Nations over its refusal to join the
International Criminal Court (ICC), as well as the security council
members’ likeliness to reject a U.S. offer on immunity for its
peacekeepers.
"They're
afraid it is going to become a Pandora's Box and that the United
States, which has more than 200,000 troops overseas involved in
peacekeeping and warfighting ... is going to be second-guessed in the
ICC," said Gary Dempsey, an expert at the Cato Institute.
He
said Washington wants to preserve the legal validity of its position
that its troops should be exempt from the court's jurisdiction, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
On
Sunday, June 30, the United States vetoed a six-month renewal of the
1,536-strong U.N. mission in Bosnia after other U.N. Security Council
members rejected a demand to make its members immune to prosecution by
the ICC, which came into being Monday, July 1, 2002.
Washington
agreed to a 72-hour rollover of the force to allow time for talks on
practical arrangements for winding it up.
Washington
is demanding blanket immunity from the tribunal's jurisdiction for
U.S. peacekeepers, on the grounds that they might be liable to
politically motivated prosecution, said the British daily newspaper,
The Independent.
The
paper, in an article published Tuesday, July 2, entitled “America is
not so special that she can be allowed to shirk her obligations,”
said that the dispute is not about protecting U.S. peacekeepers from
frivolous prosecution.
For
one thing, ICC rules provide ample safeguards against this happening.
Moreover, several participants in U.N. peacekeeping operations have
been expressly afforded immunity under specific agreements, it added.
And
as Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's envoy to the U.N., pointed out, U.S.
forces have been serving in Bosnia, despite the existence of the war
crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, under which
they could theoretically have been prosecuted, the paper added.
The
daily also criticized the inability of the U.S. accepting a minimal
risk which is of no bother to Britain, France and Germany, who play a
scarcely less important role in international peacekeeping operations,
and have welcomed the ICC.
U.S.
opposition to the court shows a certain sense of vulnerability on the
part of the administration of President George W. Bush, said Esther
Brimmer of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Transatlantic
Studies.
"This
particular administration, I think, objects to the use of universal
legal rules for governing international relations. it's just not
comfortable with that," she said.
“Washington's
obstinacy reflects its visceral opposition to the ICC, as a threat to
the supremacy of its own judicial system,” the Independent said.
According
to the paper, “that hostility is of the same coin as America's
refusal to submit to other international treaties, including those
covering global warming, nuclear testing, landmines, and chemical and
biological weapons.’
Essentially,
the U.S. is arguing that its special role in world affairs makes it a
special case, entitled to different treatment.
The
ICC, established by the 1998 Rome Statute, is mandated to prosecute
genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of aggression
committed anywhere in the world. Seventy-four states have ratified the
treaty.
The
court is not expected to be operational before the end of 2003. At the
moment the ICC has no judges, no prosecutors, no courtrooms and no
budget.
Earlier
this year, Bush withdrew the U.S. signature from the treaty, and has
sought to block the court from exercising its authority over
Americans.
"With
our global responsibilities, we are and will remain a special
target," John Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said in
exercising the U.S. veto of the Bosnian peace mission.
Washington's
principal concern – aside from its deep mistrust of supranationality
– is the widening of the court's jurisdiction, said Dempsey.
"The
fourth yet undefined crime under the statute, which is aggression,
could take off the table such things as preemptive strikes, especially
now given the president's doctrine, or blockades where you could have
U.S. policy makers judged or indicted by the court," he said.
"What
I think is at the bottom is a combination of a deep conviction that
the American constitutional processes have to be respected with regard
to any American individual citizen, and a confidence that we have
demonstrated that we will try our own under circumstances where these
allegations are made," added Alton Fyre, a specialist in U.S.
foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.
"It
is important to note that the American position is not based in any
sense that war crimes or genocide or similar categories of crime
covered by the ICC should not be prosecuted."
“Washington's
behavior is both arrogant and unacceptable. Its attempting to use the
Security Council to change a properly ratified international treaty
would in itself set an appalling precedent,” the Independent said.
“Worse
still, in the pursuit of this ignoble end, it is attempting to hold
hostage peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and possibly in a dozen
other countries, where the U.N. presence can make the difference
between a laborious return to normality and a fresh descent into
anarchy. With or without the U.S., the peacekeeping operations must
continue. And so must the new international court,” it added.
