UNITED NATIONS, July 1: The United States vetoed a resolution extending the UN peacekeeping mission in Bosnia on Sunday, then agreed to keep the mission alive three more days while the Security Council seeks a way to meet US demands for immunity from a new global war crimes court.

Washington killed off the mission after the council spurned US pressure to put US peacekeepers and other officials in Bosnia beyond the reach of the new International Criminal Court, which comes into force on Monday.

However, the United States later relented and accepted a proposal put forward by France and Britain to extend the mission’s mandate through Wednesday.

US officials insisted Washington was not caving in on principle and would continue to oppose the renewal of any UN-authorized peacekeeping mission that did not spell out immunity for US peacekeepers.

They said the three-day extension was intended mainly to give the United Nations three days to either plan for an orderly shutdown of the mission or perhaps shift its mandate early to the European Union, which had been due to take over the mission at the end of the year in any case.

The United States has threatened to withdraw from all UN-authorized peacekeeping operations, one by one, unless its immunity demands are met for each peacekeeping force.

“It’s not a question of one mission or another, it’s a question of peacekeeping in general, and until we reach some sort of satisfactory resolution of this problem, it is going to come up over and over,” US Ambassador John Negroponte told reporters after the vote.

Thirteen of the council’s 15 members — including Britain, France, Russia and China — had voted against the United States on the initial resolution to extend the mission, with Bulgaria abstaining.

Diplomats said it was the first time in memory they could recall Washington in open opposition to long-time close allies London and Paris. The three-day extension resolution was then approved unanimously.

The United States agreed to the brief extension after Secretary-General Kofi Annan told council members the veto had “severely compromised” plans to turn over the reins of the UN mission to the European Union.

US ACTS ‘WITH GREAT REGRET’: “What is at stake is the very capacity of the United Nations to continue peacekeeping operations — operations that provide irreplaceable services to the international community as a whole,” said French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte.

Negroponte said Washington had vetoed the resolution “with great regret.”

“The United States has contributed and will continue to contribute to maintaining peace and security in the Balkans and around the globe,” he said. “But we will not ask them (US personnel) to accept the additional risk of politicized prosecutions before a court whose jurisdiction over our people the government of the United States does not accept.”

“With our global responsibilities, we are and will remain a special target, and cannot have our decisions second-guessed by a court whose jurisdiction we do not recognize,” he said.

Killing off the Bosnia mission would be a public relations nightmare for Washington, which was instrumental in bringing to an end the bloody three-year war in Bosnia that spawned the term “ethnic cleansing.”

Following the US renunciation of treaties on global warming and the global war crimes court, the mission’s death would also likely reinforce allies’ fears that President George W. Bush had a dim view of international cooperation despite insistent pleas for help in the US “war on terrorism.”

But it could prove popular with Bush’s conservative backers, many of whom dislike both the new court and US participation in international peacekeeping operations.

The new court takes jurisdiction over heinous wrongdoing such as gross human rights abuses, genocide and war crimes on Monday, although its prosecutor, judges and courtrooms will not be in place in The Hague, Netherlands, until early next year.

Most council members are either among the 74 nations that have already ratified the new court or soon plan to. They say that binds them to do nothing to undermine the tribunal.

They also say there are ample safeguards in place to prevent US citizens from frivolous prosecution by the court.—Reuters