July 2, 2003	Wednesday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 1,1424

WASHINGTON, July 1: The United States on Tuesday suspended military assistance to almost 50 countries, including Colombia and six nations seeking NATO membership, because they have supported the International Criminal Court and failed to exempt Americans from possible prosecution.

As the deadline passed for governments to sign exemption agreements or face the suspension of military aid, U.S. President George W. Bush issued waivers for 22 countries.

But the 22 countries did not include Colombia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Other major countries liable to the suspension of military aid are Brazil, Cambodia, Serbia and South Africa.

Colombia, where the government is fighting leftist guerrillas and drug traffickers, has been one of the largest recipients of U.S. military aid in the world.

Washington has spent about $2 billion in aid to Colombia in recent years but the U.S. ambassador said last month that Colombia will have to shoulder more of the burden.

It was not immediately clear how long the suspension for Colombia would last. President Bush could reverse it at any moment by issuing another list of waivers.

A U.S. official said that if countries had ratified the treaty setting up the international court and had not received a waiver, the ban on military aid would come into effect.

But the threat, enshrined in the American Service Members Protection Act of 2002, does not apply to the 19 NATO members and to nine “major non-NATO allies.”

The suspension covers international military education and training (IMET) funds, which mainly pay the cost of educating foreign officers at U.S. institutions, and foreign military funding, which pays for U.S. weapons and other aid.

IMET funds usually amount to less than $1 million per country a year, but foreign military funding can run into the hundreds of millions. The Bush administration had asked Congress for $98 million for Colombia in 2003.

Congress passed the law out of disapproval of the International Criminal Court, set up to try war crimes and acts of genocide. The United States says it feared politically motivated prosecutions of civilian or military leaders.

The United States had hoped that the threat to withdraw aid would lead to a last-minute rush to sign Article 98 agreements exempting U.S. personnel from transfer to the court.

Altogether 44 governments have publicly acknowledged signing the agreement and at least seven others have signed secret agreements, U.S. officials say.

The pace of signatures does appear to have picked up a little. About 25 governments have signed in the last four months, about half of those in the last three weeks.

Based on the information initially available to Reuters, the countries subject to the suspension of military aid are:

Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Austria, Barbados, Belize, Benin, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Central African Republic, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Dominica, Ecuador, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lesotho, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Malawi, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Namibia, Nauru, Niger, Paraguay, Peru, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, Venezuela and Zambia.

The countries which received presidential waivers are: Albania, Afghanistan, Bolivia, Bosnia, Botswana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, East Timor, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Honduras, Macedonia, Mauritius, Mongolia, Nigeria, Panama, Romania, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tajikistan and Uganda.—Reuters