RIGHTS-US
Protests Over Pentagon Lobbying on ICC
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Apr 15 (IPS) - The disclosure that the Pentagon has been quietly lobbying foreign military attaches to oppose a broad mandate for the proposed International Criminal Court (ICC) has outraged U.S. rights groups.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) assailed the lobbying effort, and accused U.S. officials of attempting to the proposed court even before the critical negotiations on its creation begin in Rome in June.
In a letter to Secretary of Defence William Cohen, HRW director Kenneth Roth expressed ''profound concern'' that Washington was ''appealing to the worst instincts of some of the worst abusers of human rights.''
The Pentagon, meanwhile, confirmed a report published Tuesday in the New York Times that defence officials had invited some 100 foreign military attaches to attend briefings on U.S. concerns about the proposed court.
''What we're concerned about is that the court not be set up in a way that gives it very broad authority to pursue a vague definition of aggression,'' said Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon.
President Bill Clinton has stated he support the formation of an International Criminal Court, that would be empowered to prosecute individuals accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It would replace the ad hoc tribunals on the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda which were convened by the U.N. Security Council to prosecute those responsible for the carnage committed in the civil wars in those countries earlier this decade.
But, in preliminary negotiations at the United Nations headquarters in New York, a split developed between those countries in favour of a strong court - whose chief prosecutor would have wide and independent discretion to investigate and prosecute cases - and others, including the United States, which require the prosecutor first to gain the approval of the Security Council, where five permanent members enjoy veto power.
There are other divisions as well. The draft charter permits the judges who would serve on the ICC to approved by a simple majority vote by signatory states. Washington believes that judges should be elected by a much larger ''super-majority'' that would ensure that the industrialised western countries could effectively veto nominees they opposed.
As Bacon noted Tuesday, Washington also favours very specific definitions of ''crimes against humanity'' rather than a broad mandate that could even include racial or ethnic discrimination.
Finally, the United States believed that the proposed ICC should not be able to seize jurisdiction if the relevant country already has a recognised and functioning national legal system pursuing the case.
''In cases where a country monitors its own activities and moves against violations of its own laws, we feel that the national legal system should be given precedence over an international prosecution,'' he said.
All of these issues are moving into the domestic political debate here. Late last month, the far-right chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms'' vowed that any treaty to establish an ICC would be ''dead on arrival'' in the Senate unless Washington is given veto power over its work.
Administration officials and conservative rights groups, including New York-based Freedom House, have insisted that anything less has virtually no chance of ratification by the Senate and that human rights groups like HRW should rally behind a proposal the Senate can support. ''The idea that an international criminal court could function without the active engagement of the United States is not credible,'' warned Adrian Karatnycky, Freedom House's president, in a recent Washington Post column.
It is in that context that the Pentagon hastily invited some 100 foreign military attaches from embassies here to attend briefings on the US position. According to the New York Times, a three-page memorandum was provided to the attaches which insisted that Washington remains committed to the ICC, but stressed that ''we are also intent on avoiding the creation of the wrong kind of court.''
Among the arguments made at the briefing was that even officers and soldiers involved in UN peace-keeping operations could find themselves hauled up before the ICC by unsubstantiated charges accepted by out-of-control prosecutors. The briefings were approved by the State Department official who heads the US delegation in the negotiations, David Scheffer.
''We strongly recommend that you take an active interest in the negotiations regarding an international criminal court,'' the newspaper said, in suggesting that the military establishments of these countries weigh in with their governments with their own concerns about the ICC.
Some of those involved in the briefings represented military forces with ''extremely poor human rights records,'' charged HRW's Roth. The Pentagon thus arguably was ''encouraging military officers who might have reason to fear ICC prosecution to take an active role in weakening the court before it is created,'' he said.
In his letter to Cohen, Roth said the current draft statute includes ''sufficient safeguards to filter out frivolous or otherwise inappropriate cases.'' He called on the Defence Secretary to ''cease attempting to bring ...pressure on other countries through their militaries.'' (END/IPS/jl/mk/98)