Posted on 05/07/2002 7:26:34 AM PDT by zapiks44
U.N. Raps U.S. for Rejecting International Court Tue May 7, 8:15 AM ET By Andrew Cawthorne
LONDON (Reuters) - U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson Tuesday criticized Washington's abandonment of a new international court for the world's worst crimes, calling it regrettable and worrying.
Joining a chorus of international condemnation, she said however that even though the U.S. stance on the International Criminal Court set a bad precedent, the new institution should survive without backing from the world's only superpower.
"I believe it has been a remarkable success story...the International Criminal Court will go forward strongly and will make a great difference in accountability and ending impunity," Robinson told a news conference during a visit to London.
Her comments followed Monday's announcement by President Bush (news - web sites)'s government that it would pull out of the treaty setting up the court, due principally to fears it could be used against U.S. military personnel.
That disappointed major allies of the United States like Canada and the European Union (news - web sites). It also infuriated human rights organizations who accused Washington of ending a decades-old tradition of leading prosecution of war criminals since the Nuremberg trials at the end of World War Two.
"It's worrying and I'm concerned that the United States has not just let the matter rest as it was -- that they were unlikely to ratify -- but has actually taken symbolically a much more serious step of disengaging from this whole process" by repudiating a treaty it had signed in 2000, Robinson said.
"I do regret this step," she added.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton's government had signed the treaty setting up the court so Washington could participate in talks on arrangements for the new body.
But both administrations had said they did not intend to ask the Senate to ratify the treaty on the grounds it could be used for politically motivated prosecutions of U.S. officials or military personnel.
"WORRYING IMPLICATIONS"
The move to renounce any obligation to cooperate with the court -- meaning the United States could, for example, ignore extradition requests -- "could have worrying implications" for other nations bound by treaties, Robinson said.
"The court is a huge step forward in having accountability at the international level ... to have those who commit gross violations of human rights know that they will not get away with it any more, that there is a court before which they can be brought," she added.
Adverse international reaction to the U.S. decision continued Tuesday.
"By taking the harsh and very rare step of revoking a signature which had already been put to paper, Bush's government -- in the eyes of its critics -- is adding to its reputation for practicing 'multilateralism a la carte,"' the German liberal newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung commented.
Chibli Mallat, a leading Lebanese human rights lawyer who last year initiated a war crimes case in Belgium against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites), said the U.S. decision would marginalize the new court's influence.
"This is a shameful withdrawal from a legal commitment for which the United States was a leading protagonist as a nation governed by law," he told Reuters.
How can we "pull out" of something we were never in? President Clinton "signed" the treaty but never submitted it to the senate for ratification (so the USA was never a part of this treaty).
"...and give us the control over the United States that we so crave," she was thinking.
Refugee sex scandal triggers U.N. reforms
Most countries in the world are not democratic. Having an organization like the UN (with large representation from despotic and oppressive regimes) acting as the overseer of civilization would be comic if it weren't so scary.
Yeah. We've got enough trouble fighting off the Kennedy infection!
Memo to Globalists: Put this in your pipe and smoke it: America is, and shall remain, the world's sole superpower. No other nation even comes close. America is, and shall remain, a sovereign, self-governing free republic. No despotic global tribunal shall have jurisdiction over citizens of this free republic.
Moreover, terrorists who commit crimes against the United States, will be tried by the United States, not by the U.N., the I.C.C. nor Kofi Annan. A 'global treaty' without us isn't worth the paper it's written on.
Any questions?
Can't say it any better than that.
Also quite a few of the signers don't have representative governments (Mali, Sierra Leone, Gabon, Congo, Jordan, Tajikistan). A surprising large # of the countries also are very small with small populations (less than 20 million). The only largely populated countries were France, Germany, UK, and Nigeria. When the ratification of the treaty by a country like San Marino or the Marshall Islands is as significant as the ratification of the treaty by countries like Germany or the UK, then something's not right.
In short, the ICC has several flaw and infringements, and we should reject it until ALL of them are solved, not some, ALL. And if the UN and the world doesn't like it, too damn bad. We will not blindly follow what the rest of the world does. That is the purpose of national sovereignty.
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