Posted on 06/23/2004 7:34:35 PM PDT by neverdem
UNITED NATIONS, June 23 — The United States bowed Wednesday to broad opposition on the Security Council and announced it was dropping its effort to gain immunity for its troops from prosecution by the International Criminal Court.
"The United States has decided not to proceed further with consideration and action on the draft at this time in order to avoid a prolonged and divisive debate," James B. Cunningham, the deputy American ambassador, said on emerging from the Council chamber.
The envoys from the 15-member Council had spent the morning in closed session, discussing a rewritten version of the American resolution that circulated on Tuesday night to try to meet the objections.
Resolutions granting a year's exemption had passed the Council in each of the past two years, but this year the renewal ran into difficulties because of the prison scandal in Iraq and strong opposition from Secretary General Kofi Annan.
The outcome, while a political defeat for Washington, will have no effect on the vulnerability to prosecution of American soldiers in Iraq. Neither the United States nor Iraq is a member of the tribunal, and its jurisdiction is limited to countries that do not themselves prosecute crimes by their military.
The setback for American diplomacy at the United Nations came just two weeks after the Bush administration was praised there for demonstrating flexibility and a willingness to compromise in securing a unanimous vote on a resolution affirming the arrangements for the transfer of power in Iraq.
This time American diplomats, who had been confident of obtaining a routine "technical rollover" of the measure, appeared to have miscalculated the impact of the publicity given the American mistreatment of Iraqi detainees.
They were also caught off guard by the intervention of Mr. Annan, who told the ambassadors on Friday that a vote in favor of the United States would undermine the new solidarity of the Council.
Shortly after Mr. Cunningham's announcement, Mr. Annan issued a statement saying "the decision by the United States not to pursue a resolution on this matter will help maintain the unity of the Security Council at a time when it faces difficult challenges."
Ambassador Wang Guangya of China, which had supported the measure the past two years, said, "Clearly from the very beginning, this year China has been under pressure because of the scandals and the news coverage of the prisoner abuse, and it made it very difficult for my government to support it."
Spain's ambassador, Juan Antonio Yáñez-Bernuevo, explained his country's opposition, saying, "For us the essential thing is to remain faithful to the International Criminal Court, which we strongly support, and also to the United Nations charter, and to respect the statement made by the secretary general last week, which had a powerful effect."
In calling for the Council to turn back the American request, Mr. Annan said it was "of dubious judicial value," and especially objectionable in the aftermath of the prisoner abuse. Passing the measure, he said, would discredit the Council, the United Nations and the "primacy of the rule of law," and he appealed to the members to maintain the common purpose they had shown on June 8 in their unanimous vote on Iraq.
Mr. Yáñez-Bernuevo said he regretted that the Americans did not mount the same kind of diplomatic effort that secured that unanimous vote. "We would have liked to see a process as we saw in the Iraq resolution, a more collective effort," he said. Instead, he said, "according to what we heard from the U.S., that was the last word, they could not go any further, there was no point in pursuing the matter."
Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz of Chile said Mr. Annan's statement had had "a very important impact on many delegations."
The Bush administration has said it needs the troop-protection measure to prevent people from using the court to bring politically motivated war-crime prosecutions against Americans abroad.
Elaborating on that today, Ambassador Cunningham noted that the United States was the "largest contributor to global security."
"When the United States voluntarily commits its armed forces to participate in peacekeeping missions around the world, we believe it is wholly inappropriate to subject them to a tribunal which cannot provide adequate guarantees of due process," he said.
Asked if the United States would limit its peacekeeping actitivies in the future — a threat it has made in past years — Mr. Cunningham said, "I'm not going to comment on that."
An accompanying statement said that in the absence of a resolution, the United States would "take into account the risk of International Criminal Court review when determining contributions to U.N. authorized or established operations."
Addressing concerns about American military conduct abroad, Mr. Cunningham said, "The United States has a well-functioning system of military justice that will assure accountablity."
Since the international court was established, the Bush administration has made bilateral agreements with 90 countries barring any prosecution of American officials by the court.
The current exemption expires on June 30, the day Iraq regains its sovereignty and American troops become part of the kind of United Nations-approved force that the renewal was meant to cover.
But the court has no jurisdiction in Iraq, which is not a signatory to the 1998 treaty establishing it, or in the United States, which is also not a signer. In addition, backers of the court argue that since it only accepts cases when a nation is unwilling to prosecute, there is little liklihood it would ever be called upon to deal with the United States, which has a functioning military justice system.
The court, formed in July 2002, is to hear cases of war crimes, genocide and systematic human rights abuses. Coincidentally on Wednesday, it announced that its first case would be an investigation of mass killings in Congo.
The resolution that was withdrawn on Wednesday included a revision intended to meet a major objection: language in the original proposal that expressed the intention to renew the one-year exemption each July 1 "for as long as may be necessary."
Mr. Annan protested that this clause served to perpetuate United Nations approval of what had been considered a temporary departure.
That paragraph was eliminated and new language inserted that pledged that this request for a one-year exemption would be the final one. But the attempt to bridge the differences did not work, and Ambassador Muñoz, of Chile, said that while he thought the United States' decision had been "too rushed," it was probably the best one under the circumstances.
"Better not to be divided after the consensus and the unity that we showed on Iraq," he said.
I'm having big trouble with George Bush.
Slip Sliding away......
Me, too.
Holy Chit
The UN and its relationship to the US is changing faster than expected, especially surprising under a Republican administration.
Read the whole article. There are two reasons why our boys are not liable for trial by ICC.
This is the most F'ed up thing I have heard in a really long time.
W is stepping to the left and I am not going to step into the voting booth in November
If it's a close case, whoever's President will receive an earful from good Americans who want to make sure that US soldiers get a fair trial. And if they don't, then the US ought to pull out of the UN and the treaty.
From the article:
The outcome, while a political defeat for Washington, will have no effect on the vulnerability to prosecution of American soldiers in Iraq. Neither the United States nor Iraq is a member of the tribunal, and its jurisdiction is limited to countries that do not themselves prosecute crimes by their military
They were also caught off guard by the intervention of Mr. Annan, who told the ambassadors on Friday that a vote in favor of the United States would undermine the new solidarity of the Council.
Shortly after Mr. Cunningham's announcement, Mr. Annan issued a statement saying "the decision by the United States not to pursue a resolution on this matter will help maintain the unity of the Security Council at a time when it faces difficult challenges."
Ambassador Wang Guangya of China, which had supported the measure the past two years, said, "Clearly from the very beginning, this year China has been under pressure because of the scandals and the news coverage of the prisoner abuse, and it made it very difficult for my government to support it."
Score it a double victory for the pc press: their official story on Abu Ghraib carried the day, and their refusal to cover the oil-for-food scandal, which under an Abu Ghraib-style onslaught would have chased Kofi Annan out of Turtle Bay, empowered Annan to screw America yet again.
Well then, pull all of our troops out of UN missions and refuse to participate in any UN missions. Let's see how long they last.
We cannot pull out of the treaty because, thanks to George W. Bush, we're not in the treaty in the first place.
What is wrong with you? This is the best you can do at the UN. That is not President Bush's fault. Now if the US sends troops to peacekeeping and subjecting our forces to UN leadership and ICC then we got trouble. Do you think Kerry would make any difference?
Glad you're not voting. Our boys in Iraq and Afghanistan especially appreciate your patriotism.
That's for now. A few years down the line, and the story will be much different, and it won't even matter what it says on paper.
Don't believe me? Then just compare what the real Geneva Conventions say, versus what the pc media (NYT, etc.), the lefty street, and "world opinion" (if you'll pardon the triplicate) have been saying is in the Conventions since at least last year. And the Bush Admin, instead of hanging tough, let's these lying characters dictate the terms of debate.
He's not objecting to it. That effectively submits us to the court.
Oh, go stuff a sock in it. We're fighting for our lives in this election, and you guys are carping so much it looks like you're trying to lose the war and the country to boot.
that's just the start...
I remeber Roe v Wade "only in extreme cases or in the cases of rape, incest ... never, ever will there be abortion on demand in this country.."
I remember the 1st Illinois lotto "we won't have to raise taxes, this lotto will pay for all the needs our schools...'
That's the way libs/socialists sell it, then slowly it degenerates into a fiasco. within 15 years, they'll be trying our men at the UN, wait and see.
If Bush was a real conservative, he would have never given in to the UN on this matter.
Of course I'll never vote for Kerry, but Bush does some crappy things at times. And this is one of them.
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