LONDON: Belgium is becoming an interesting country. In the course of a week, it has managed to upset both liberal opinion in Europe — by granting the far-right Vlaams Blok 18 parliamentary seats — and liberal opinion in the US. On Wednesday, a human rights lawyer filed a case with the federal prosecutors whose purpose is to arraign Tommy Franks, the commander of the American troops in Iraq, for crimes against humanity. This may be the only judicial means, anywhere on earth, of holding the US government to account for its actions.

The case has been filed in Belgium, on behalf of 17 Iraqis and two Jordanians, because Belgium has a law permitting foreigners to be tried for war crimes, irrespective of where they were committed. The suit has little chance of success, for the law was hastily amended by the government at the beginning of this month. But the fact that the plaintiffs had no choice but to seek redress in Belgium speaks volumes about the realities of Tony Blair’s vision for a world order led by the US, built on democracy and justice.

Franks appears to have a case to answer. The charges fall into four categories: the use of cluster bombs; the killing of civilians by other means; attacks on the infrastructure essential for public health; and the failure to prevent the looting of hospitals. There is plenty of supporting evidence.

US forces dropped around 1,500 cluster bombs from the air and fired an unknown quantity from artillery pieces. British troops fired 2,100. Each contained several hundred bomblets, which fragment into shrapnel. Between 200 and 400 Iraqi civilians were killed by them during the war. Others, mostly children, continue to killed by those bomblets which failed to explode when they hit the ground. The effects of their deployment in residential areas were both predictable and predicted. This suggests that their use there breached protocol II to the Geneva conventions, which prohibits “violence to the life, health and physical or mental well-being” of non-combatants.

The fourth convention also insists that an occupying power is responsible for “ensuring and maintaining ... the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory”. Yet when the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked why his troops had failed to prevent the looting of public buildings, he replied: “Stuff happens. Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.” On several occasions US soldiers acted on orders to fire at Iraqi ambulances, killing or wounding their occupants. They shot the medical crews which came to retrieve the dead and wounded at the demonstration in Falluja. The Geneva conventions suggest that these are straightforward war crimes: “Medical units and transports shall be respected and protected at all times and shall not be the object of attack.”

The armed forces of the US, in other words, appear to have taken short cuts while prosecuting their war with Iraq. Some of these may have permitted them to conclude their war more swiftly, but at the expense of the civilian population. Repeatedly, in some cases systematically, US soldiers appear to have broken the laws of war.

We should not be surprised to learn that the US government has responded to the suit with outrage. The state department has warned Belgium that it will punish nations which permit their laws to be used for “political ends”. The Belgian government hasn’t waited to discover what this means. It has amended the law and denounced the lawyer who filed the case.

The Bush government’s response would doubtless be explained by its apologists as a measure of its insistence upon and respect for national sovereignty. But while the US forbids other nations to proscribe the actions of its citizens, it also insists that its own laws should apply abroad. The foreign sovereignty immunities act, for example, permits the US courts to prosecute foreigners for harming commercial interests in the US, even if they are breaking no laws within their own countries. The Helms-Burton Act allows the courts in America to confiscate the property of foreign companies which do business with Cuba. The Iran-Libya Sanctions Act instructs the government to punish foreign firms investing in the oil or gas sectors in those countries. The message these laws send is this: you can’t prosecute us, but we can prosecute you.

Of course, the sensible means of resolving legal disputes between nations is the use of impartial, multinational tribunals, such as the International Criminal Court in the Hague. But impartial legislation is precisely what the US government will not contemplate. When the ICC treaty was being negotiated, the US demanded that its troops should be exempt from prosecution, and the UN Security Council gave it what it wanted. The US also helped to ensure that the court’s writ runs only in the nations which have ratified the treaty. Its soldiers in Iraq would thus have been exempt in any case, as Saddam Hussein’s government was one of seven which voted against the formation of the court in 1998. The others were China, Israel, Libya, Qatar, Yemen and the US. This is the company the American government keeps when it comes to international law.

All this serves to illustrate the grand mistake Tony Blair is making. The empire he claims to influence entertains no interest in his moral posturing. Its vision of justice between nations is the judicial oubliette of Guantanamo Bay. The idea that it might be subject to the international rule of law, and therefore belong to a world order in which other nations can participate, is as unthinkable in Washington as a six-month public holiday. If Blair does not understand this, he has missed the entire point of US foreign policy. If he does understand it, he has misled us as to the purpose of his own diplomacy. The US government does not respect the law between nations. It is the law.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.

Rather than take anything away, this has added interest. I am familiar with the argument that the crowds come to watch one-day cricket because it provides a feast of runs. I don’t buy into this entirely.

One-day cricket has been treated like a spoilt brat for too long. It requires skill to negotiate the seaming or turning ball and it’s time the batsmen had to work for their runs.

A great deal of enjoyment is to be had from a batsman clouting sixes but the same enjoyment can be had from a Muttiah Muralitharan bamboozling a batsman. A good cricket match is one when both the batsmen and bowlers have an equal chance.

Next week will be the time to review the Sri Lanka triangular though Pakistan’s batting continues to be a cause of concern. There will have to be a cut-off date for calling the Pakistan team “a new look” side. I accept that rebuilding will take time but it isn’t as if the players were picked from a kindergarten. In the match against Sri Lanka, there was plenty of poor shot-selection and there appeared to be no batting plan on how to go about chasing a relatively modest total.

I still maintain that someone more experienced should be coming at one-down. It is a key batting position, one that sets the tempo of the innings and Faisal Iqbal would be far more valuable in the middle order. I am not too concerned at the lack of form of Yousuf Youhana. He’s been out to some soft dismissals which suggest lapses of concentration. In the absence of Inzamam-ul-Haq, he is Pakistan’s best batsman. It’s merely a matter of time before he finds his touch, Still, there is no need for undue worry, as yet.

Wasim Akram has announced his retirement from international cricket and I learnt of it from the main news bulletin of the BBC, a tribute to him in a way. I will deal with Wasim Akram’s retirement in a separate column but it is a sad moment when one of the greatest cricketers decides to call it a day. He has taken the right decision.

The best time to leave is when you see the host getting restless. He was still good enough but he was past his prime. He had set very high standards and he would have always been judged by those high standards which he was no longer able to maintain consistently. This is the price one has to pay for greatness. Nothing but the best is acceptable.

Mediocrity gets lost in the crowd. Wasim had become controversial and his name had been dragged in match-fixing. I had defended him because a lot of the allegations smacked of a personal agenda. In defending him, I had simply urged his accusers to come up with proof.

I believe the onus of proving someone guilty was on the accusers and I upheld the legal principle of the presumption of innocence which is the cornerstone of our judicial system. For the moment, let it suffice that he was the best ever left-arm fast bowler in the history of the game and brought great triumphs for Pakistan. If there was a Hall of Fame for cricket, Wasim Akram’s name would be high on the list.

But it is to the Antigua Test match between Australia and West Indies, I must turn. To be asked to make 418 in the last innings of any Test match is a high mountain. Against Australia, it was Mount Everest. Brian Lara made a contribution but he did not win the match for the West Indies. It was Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan, Omari Banks and Vasbert Drakes who answered the call, above and beyond duty.

I had briefly mentioned the squaring-up of Lara and Steve Waugh last week. But things got much worse and the confrontation between Glenn McGrath and Sarwan and the general bad temper shown by the Australians as it dawned on them that they could lose was an absolute disgrace.

The Australian media reaction was best summed up by Peter Roebuck, the distinguished cricket writer; “Cricket searched for a champion team and found only an unscrupulous aggressor.”

Steve Waugh, while regretting McGrath’s outburst makes an astonishing attempt to disown any responsibility. He says that is up to the individual players to behave themselves. Good God man, he was the captain! He should have realised that this boorish behaviour was giving the image of Australian cricket a black eye. He should have sent McGrath packing into the dressing-room to cool off.

But much worse: Consider the reaction of John Howard, the Australian prime minister. He said that McGrath’s reaction was “very natural Australian thing to do.”

It leaves me speechless. He probably mistook the West Indian player for terrorist which he, in the exalted company of George Bush and Tony Blair are hunting down.

But where was the match referee, Mike Proctor in all this? Nowhere in sight and there hasn’t been a whimper out of him. The time has come to ask whether the sole duty of a match referee is to preside at the toss and award fines for slow over-rates?

Originally, the match referee’s job was conceived as ‘jobs for the boys’. Then he was asked to enforce a code of conduct and to punish a team or individual who brought the game into disgrace.

Millions saw on television the Australians bringing the game into disgrace, except the match referee who appeared to have seen nothing. The ICC must demand an explanation from Proctor and, for a change, either ban him or fine him for not doing his duty.