News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: War Crimes Treaty

Date: January 02, 2001

"U.S. signs treaty on crimes of war Senate must now ratify the action
From Herald Wire Services

WASHINGTON -- Acting on a last-minute decision by President Clinton, the United States on Sunday signed a treaty creating the world's first permanent international war crimes tribunal to bring to justice people accused of crimes against humanity.

The president said his action, taken with some reservations, builds on U.S. support for justice and individual accountability dating to American involvement in the Nuremberg tribunals that brought Nazi war criminals to justice after World War II. ``Our action today sustains that tradition of moral leadership,'' he said.

However, the treaty should not be submitted to the Senate for ratification until certain concerns are met, he said.

Clinton said his administration remains especially worried that the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court, which would replace case-specific international courts with a permanent tribunal, might claim jurisdiction over citizens from nations that do not ratify the treaty, as ultimately could be the case with the United States.

One reason that he decided to sign, Clinton said, was to enable the United States to continue to influence the shape of the treaty. Sunday was the last day that nations could sign the treaty without first having ratified it.

Senate action on the treaty appears unlikely any time soon. Clinton's action nonetheless represents a powerful U.S. endorsement of the treaty's goals, and for that reason it poses a political and diplomatic challenge for the incoming administration of President-elect George W. Bush.

Senior advisors to Bush, like many Republicans in Congress, have strongly opposed the treaty.

In a letter circulated in late November, legislators and political figures -- including Donald Rumsfeld, now Bush's nominee for secretary of defense -- said the court would threaten U.S. sovereignty, and could move to prosecute members of the American armed forces.

``Naturally we think it is essential that our nation's military personnel be safely beyond the reach of an unaccountable international prosecutor operating under procedures inconsistent with our Constitution,'' the letter said.

Human rights organizations applauded Clinton's move.

``The president has made history here,'' said Richard Dicker, director of international justice programs at Human Rights Watch, a human rights monitoring organization. ``He has strengthened hope for international justice for millions and millions of people worldwide.''

Others denounced the president's action.

``This decision will not stand,'' said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, R-N.C. ``I will make reversing this decision, and protecting America's fighting men and women from the jurisdiction of this international kangaroo court, one of my highest priorities in the new Congress.''

Helms has pledged to give top priority during the congressional session this month to passage of a bill that would bar U.S. cooperation with any such international tribunal.

Helms also had tried to persuade Israel to reject the international court. However, following Clinton's lead, Israel declared Sunday that it had decided to sign the treaty. The United States and Israel were among the handful of countries that did not sign the statute creating the treaty when it was issued in Rome in 1998.

At the United Nations, meanwhile, the treaty was signed by a representative of the government of Iran. On Friday, four countries signed -- the Bahamas, Mongolia, Tanzania and Uzbekistan -- bringing the number to 137.

Twenty-seven nations have ratified the treaty, and 60 are needed before it can enter into force. David Scheffer, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes, signed the treaty on behalf of the United States a few hours after Clinton authorized him to do so.

The International Criminal Court would be the first permanent institution created specifically to try charges of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

At present the United Nations has two specifically targeted and temporary war-crimes courts in operation. One deals with suspects from the Bosnia-Herzegovina civil war of the early 1990s and the other with people implicated in atrocities during unrest in Rwanda in 1994.

Treaty supporters contend that a permanent international war crimes court is ``the missing link'' in the global legal system and say that over the past half-century there have been many instances of war crimes and crimes against humanity that have gone unpunished.

Supporters note that no one has ever been held accountable for the alleged genocide in Cambodia in the 1970s when an estimated two million people were killed by the Khmer Rouge or for killings in such other countries as Mozambique, Liberia and El Salvador."