July 14, 2002	Sunday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 3, 1423

UNITED NATIONS, July 13: Following intense diplomatic wrangling the UN security council on Friday unanimously voted to give American peacekeepers a year’s exemption from prosecution by the new International Criminal Court.

The intense feud pitted the United States, which opposes the International Criminal Court, against all 15 European Union nations, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Argentina and many other advocates of the tribunal.

Following three weeks of negotiations, the council on Friday adopted a compromise resolution that fell short of the U.S. administration’s demands for blanket immunity from the court but saved U.N. peacekeeping missions from the Bush administration’s threats to veto them, one by one.

The security council then quickly moved to approve an extension of the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and a smaller one on Croatia’s Prevlaka peninsula. Canada which took the lead in opposing any immunity to US peacemakers from the ICC expressed disappointment over the compromise deal. “We are extremely disappointed with the outcome,” Canadian Ambassador Paul Heinbecker said.

“We don’t think it’s in the mandate of the security council to interpret treaties negotiated somewhere else,” he said, adding that no one could define any threat to peace and security to justify the resolution.

US Ambassador John Negroponte said the resolution “offers us a degree of protection for the coming year.”

He then proceeded to threaten supporters of the court — virtually every ally of Washington — if any American were ever brought before the tribunal, to be set up in The Hague, Netherlands.

“Should the ICC eventually seek to detain any American, the US would regard this as illegitimate — and it would have serious consequences? No nation should underestimate our commitment to protect our citizens,” Negroponte said.

The resolution asks the tribunal to allow a 12-month grace period before investigating or prosecuting UN peacekeepers from countries that do not support the court “if a case arises” and “unless the security council decides otherwise.”

It expresses the council’s “intention” to renew the resolution in a year but does not commit it to do so.

The ICC was set up to try individuals for the world’s most heinous atrocities: genocide, war crimes and systematic human rights abuses, a belated effort to fulfil the promise of the Nuremberg trials 56 years ago in which Nazi leaders were prosecuted for war crimes.

The ambassador of Britain, Jeremy Greenstock, who is also security council’s president for July was responsible for working out the compromise with the United States.