June 11, 2003	Wednesday	Rabi-us-Sani 10, 1424

WASHINGTON: Civil society groups are urging member states of the UN Security Council to reject Washington’s upcoming request to exempt all its soldiers and officials from the jurisdiction of the new body for a second straight year. The administration of President George W. Bush says it needs more time to negotiate bilateral agreements with more countries around the world that would bar them from surrendering US nationals to the Court, set up under the 1998 Rome Statute to investigate and prosecute individuals for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

So far, 37 countries have reportedly signed such agreements, although only a handful have ratified them. The most important include Romania, Israel, India, Egypt and the Philippines; most of the rest are small, poor countries that are heavily dependent on external aid, including US military assistance.

“The (UN) resolution is an attempt to satisfy domestic political ideology and legislation, and it is another attempt by the United States to subordinate a multilateral institution to US power,” says William Pace, convenor of Coalition for the ICC.

“It is vital that governments have an open meeting and continue to express their principled objection to misuse of the (United Nations) Charter and the Security Council and the violation of the Rome Statute,” he said.

The Coalition, human rights groups and Washington’s NATO allies have strongly resisted the administration’s efforts — through both the Security Council and bilateral negotiations with weaker nations — to gain exemptions for its military and officials, arguing that they will undermine the ICC itself, as well as international law in general. The Court started work in The Hague last July.

Last year, Washington asked the Security Council to approve a complete, indefinite exemption from the Court’s jurisdiction for US nationals, and even threatened to veto the renewal of UN peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and elsewhere if it did not get its way. But the other Council members, particularly those associated with the European Union (EU), refused to go along.

After two weeks of intense and often bitter negotiations, the two sides compromised by approving a resolution that granted an exemption of one year for all individuals from countries that had not ratified the Rome Statute. While former President Bill Clinton signed the Statute in the last days of his term, he did not refer it to the Senate for ratification and the Bush administration formally renounced his signature in May 2002.

Washington has argued that the ICC, which is likely to hear its first case early next year, gives too much discretion to prosecutors who may bring cases against US officials for political reasons.

With some 150,000 US troops deployed in Iraq, another 9,000 in Afghanistan, and tens of thousands more in scores of countries across Eurasia and in and around the Gulf, it is worried that it will become a prime target for politicized prosecutions. But rights groups and European governments, including Britain, say these fears are greatly exaggerated.

“The US experts know that there is practically no justification for the Security Council exemptions and the likelihood that a US peacekeeping soldier would come under the jurisdiction of the Court is almost zero,” said Pace.

Washington now hopes to extend the Security Council’s exemption for yet another year. Last week, US Ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, told the Associated Press that the US would like “a technical extension ... of the resolution. It’s very straightforward.” “We wouldn’t introduce any substantive changes into the resolution we adopted last year by unanimity in the Council, and we would assume — certainly hope — that this would receive overwhelming support.”

But opponents are expected to lobby Security Council members to reject any extension. Richard Dicker of New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned that simply approving the extension would “increase the chance of its becoming a permanent fixture.” The rights groups and government backers of the ICC have argued that the Security Council lacks the legal authority to grant exemptions because the UN Charter does not grant it power to amend an international treaty.

They want an open debate on the issue, and early indications are that Council members Germany and Mexico will press for one. Of the 15 members of the Council, only the United States, China and Pakistan have not signed the Statute. The other 12 have either signed or ratified it.

Canada, a major champion of the ICC, is also expected to request an open debate that would include non-Security Council members like itself. Last year, Ottawa led a move by several dozen countries to publicly condemn US effort to seek exemptions for its citizens.

Washington wants a vote before July 1, when last year’s resolution formally expires.

Before then, Washington is also expected to step up its efforts to gain new bilateral agreements, in part because under a law passed by Congress last year, countries that ratify the Statute will be banned from receiving US military aid unless the president waives those sanctions before July 1.

For example, Bush is expected to press visiting Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand this week on signing such a bilateral accord, despite recent US criticism of his government for serious rights abuses, including the summary execution of hundreds of suspected drug traffickers.

This provision of the so-called American Service members Protection Act (ASPA) is likely to hit poor countries hardest, according to Pace’s group, which represents dozens of human rights groups around the world. It is only one of several controversial provisions in the ASPA, including another that authorises the president to use deploy military force to free any US citizen in the ICC’s custody.

Representatives of many countries have complained that Washington’s campaign against the ICC and its efforts to exempt US nationals from its jurisdiction is yet another illustration of the unilateralist trajectory on which the Bush administration has taken US foreign policy. They have warned that the US attitude toward the ICC only increases resentment abroad and makes Washington vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy about the rule of law.

Lithuania last month became the 90th nation to ratify the Protocol. As of May, all NATO members, except the United States and Turkey, have ratified the treaty, as have all members of the European Union and all candidate EU members, except the Czech Republic.

Last year, the EU’s legal service issued an opinion that any member that signed a bilateral immunity accord with Washington would be violating the Rome Statute.

Some of the countries that have signed bilateral accords with Washington to exempt US personnel from ICC jurisdiction have also ratified the Protocol. These include Romania, East Timor, Tajikistan, the Marshall Islands, Honduras, Djibouti, Nauru, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sierra Leone, Gabon, Ghana, Albania, Bosnia and Bolivia. States that have signed but not yet ratified the Protocol include Israel, the Dominican Republic, Uzbekistan, Madagascar, Bahrain, the Philippines, and Egypt.

States that have signed bilateral accords with Washington and have not signed the Protocol include Palau, Mauritania, Rwanda, Tonga, Maldives, Micronesia, El Salvador, Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Tuvalu, Azerbaijan, and Bhutan.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.