July 4, 2002	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 22,1423

UNITED NATIONS: To the open dismay of its allies, the United States appeared prepared to paralyze UN peacekeeping operations from the Middle East to Central Africa, unless it extracts a guarantee that US personnel will be protected from the new International Criminal Court — a condition that backers of the court consider legally and politically untenable.

UN officials and foreign diplomats are uncertain about both the long-term implications of the US stance as well as its motivation. Washington has rejected back-room suggestions here that it simply withdraw from UN peacekeeping missions, few of which have more than a handful of American participants.

American officials told reporters and foreign diplomats in recent weeks that the US wants to retain the option of participating in UN peacekeeping, but cannot do so unless its demands for immunity are met, and is therefore prepared, if necessary, to block peacekeeping missions that do not provide these guarantees.

After vetoing a routine extension of two UN peacekeeping missions in Bosnia on Sunday, US diplomats proposed a new Security Council resolution on Tuesday that would exempt from court “investigations or prosecutions” all current, former and future peacekeepers from countries such as the United States that haven’t signed the treaty establishing the court.

The US resolution broadly interprets language in the treaty allowing the Security Council to halt specific court proceedings for up to a year, and would require perpetual, 12-month deferrals of any court action related to US peacekeepers. Richard Dicker, an official of Human Rights Watch, which strongly supports the court, says the treaty never envisioned that kind of role for the Security Council.

Britain and France are expected to strongly resist the new US proposal when it comes up for debate in the Security Council. Both US allies enjoy veto power on the council and strongly oppose special provisions exempting any peacekeepers from the court’s jurisdiction.

The Europeans long have understood US objections to the international court, but have been surprised by the hardening of the Bush administration’s position in the wake of the court’s entry into legal force on Monday.

With the council still deadlocked over the American demands, the United Nations began planning to end its police-training programme in Bosnia, and nervously contemplating the future of equally sensitive UN missions elsewhere.

Four UN missions come up for renewal this month — in Lebanon, Georgia, the Western Sahara and the Prevlaka enclave in Croatia. Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s UN ambassador and the current president of the Security Council, said on Tuesday, that most council members “do not want to go through this agony every time a new peacekeeping operation comes up.”

European allies and some former US diplomats criticized the Bush administration’s confrontational strategy, but Bush reiterated this adamant opposition to the new court.

Earlier, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer called the US stance here “a vital matter of principle.” The UN talks “are difficult,” he acknowledged, and “it’s impossible to predict what their outcome will be.”

European officials said the administration misjudged the depth of their commitment to the new court, assuming wrongly that British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac would eventually give in to US pressure. The court is genuinely popular in Europe, they said, perhaps precisely because it is not controlled by the United States, the sole global superpower. In Britain, moreover, the Labour Party could face a rebellion in its ranks if Blair is perceived to uncritically support a go-it-alone US foreign policy.

But the US commitment to its position was equally misjudged by the Europeans, diplomats say.

China and Russia, the other two permanent veto-wielding members of the Security Council, might appear more vulnerable to war crimes prosecutions, but both have supported the European position in the dispute and profess to be unconcerned by possible court infringement on their sovereignty.

Bush’s concerns about protecting US troops abroad reflect a strong consensus in the defence establishment and in both houses of Congress, said Alton Frye, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington. Even US officials share the view that Americans stationed abroad are vulnerable to politically motivated prosecutions, he said.

There are currently few US personnel of any kind in UN peacekeeping missions, and the Bush administration had already said that it was not planning to have any US soldiers don the blue helmets of official UN forces.—Dawn/The LAT/WP News Service.