BRUSSELS, Sept 2 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Amnesty International lashed out at leading EU states including Britain and Italy Monday, September 02, 2002, for possible deals with Washington over a new criminal court, in a row straining EU-U.S. relations.

The rights group said bilateral agreements between Washington and EU states granting immunity to U.S. nationals from the International Criminal Court (ICC) would violate the law setting up the ICC, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"Bilateral agreements being pursued by the United States with individual countries, including EU member states, violate both the spirit and the law of the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court," it said in a 30-page legal analysis.

"Several EU member states, notably the United Kingdom and Italy, suggested that these bilateral agreements... do not violate the ICC Treaty," it said.

"Amnesty International's analysis proves the opposite and coincides with the conclusion reached by the European Commission's legal service."

The row over the ICC, which Washington fiercely opposes, fueled growing tensions in recent weeks after the U.S. State Department offered to sign bilateral accords granting immunity for its nationals.

Some members of the 15-member EU hoped that an informal meeting in Denmark last weekend would enable them to forge a consensus banning such bilateral accords, and obliging Washington to deal with the EU as a whole.

However, it was not to be, and they have now agreed to let EU lawyers study the issue further over the coming weeks.

"Some countries are ready to negotiate. Others are not. In public, the only two countries which have expressed a different position are Italy and the United Kingdom," said one European diplomat.

(Italian Prime Minister Silvio) "Berlusconi is trying to position himself as the best friend of the Americans, along with the British," said a diplomat source in the sidelines of informal talks between EU Foreign Ministers in Elsinore.

An Amnesty report describing "U.S. efforts to obtain immunity for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes," said it showed how deals signed with several countries including EU candidate state Romania had violated the ICC Treaty on three levels.

"The U.S. bilateral agreements clearly undermine the ICC's integrity and credibility. Amnesty International urges those EU member states who are wavering to look at the legal conclusions, and pull back from any compromise that would itself undermine international law," said Amnesty's Dick Oosting.

"Moreover, this is of critical importance for the candidate countries that are looking to the EU to take a clear stand on this issue."

On Wednesday, August 28, Europe came under growing pressure to respond to U.S. pressure over the ICC.

The U.S. increased the heat on the EU Monday, August 26, when the State Department openly voiced opposition to EU plans for a common policy on whether to sign ICC immunity deals with Washington.

"This is a clear test of the European Union's ... coordinated foreign policy," said Lotte Leicht of the lobby group Human Rights Watch in Brussels.

"If the European Union blinks now, the most hard core unilateralists in the Bush administration will draw a considerable encouragement for other foreign policy initiatives in which international law will be challenged," she added.

The ICC issue is threatening to sour trans-Atlantic relations and drive a new wedge between the United States, strongly opposed to the court, and its European allies, who actively back it.

Washington fears that The Hague-based court may be used as a tool to prosecute U.S. servicemen and women for political reasons and warned that it may withdraw military aid to large numbers of countries who refuse to sign Article 98 deals.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell sent letters to individual EU governments in mid-August asking them to sign bilateral agreements to exempt U.S. peacekeepers on their territory from ICC jurisdiction.