UNITED NATIONS, June 12: United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan warned the UN Security Council on Thursday against repeatedly giving US peacekeeping troops immunity from prosecution by the International Criminal Court.

Speaking before a vote on a resolution to renew a one-year exemption demanded by the United States, he said the council would undermine its own authority as well as that of the ICC if this became “an annual routine”.

Mr Annan, a former head of peacekeeping operations, said no soldier serving under the UN blue flag had ever been accused of an offence “anywhere near the kind of crimes that fall under the jurisdiction of the ICC”.

The US demand for exemption “deals not only with a hypothetical case, but with a highly improbable one”, he said.

Established under the 1999 Rome Statute, the ICC is the first permanent international court to try cases of warcrimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The court’s judges and prosecutor have been appointed, but no case has yet been brought before it.

Fifteen of the 90 countries which have so ratified the statute asked to take part in an open debate as non-mebers of the council before the vote, which took place on Thursday.

They include the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the council has authorized deployment of a heavily armed international force, led by France, to prevent further massacres of civilians by rebel militias.

Mr Annan told council members he believed they were “acting in good faith” to protect the future of peacekeeping missions and said he was grateful for that.

But the legitimacy of peacekeeping would be undermined if the council repeatedly renewed the exemption and gave the impression that “it wished to claim absolute and permanent immunity for people serving in the operations it establishes,” he said. —AFP