Global Policy Forum

By James Bone

United Nations peacekeeping operations in some of the world's most dangerous troublespots were under threat yesterday after the United States vetoed the UN police mission in Bosnia.

The US increased pressure on its allies by announcing that it would start to withdraw US personnel from the UN operation in East Timor. John Negroponte, the US Ambassador, said that three US peacekeepers would be withdrawn from East Timor unless demands for immunity from the new International Criminal Court were met.

America provides three military observers and 75 police officers to the East Timor mission and was angered when last month the UN Security Council rejected its request that they be guaranteed immunity.

UN officials and European diplomats fear that, unless a compromise is reached, the US stance on the International Criminal Court could cripple UN peacekeeping.

The UN Interim Force in Lebanon, which helps to patrol the Israeli border, is the most important of the five UN peacekeeping operations that will come up for renewal during Britain's presidency of the Security Council this month. The others are in Angola, Georgia, Western Sahara and the Prevlaka Peninsula in the Balkans.

The US contributes only about 700 of the 47,000 peacekeeping personnel on UN duty around the world and a US withdrawal would not provoke the collapse of any of the 16 missions. But Washington has chosen to use its veto power on the Security Council to threaten the very existence of UN missions as they come up for renewal if its concerns are not addressed.

Its goal is to insert a guarantee of immunity for US soldiers serving not just in "blue-helmet" UN peacekeeping operations but in so-called "green-hat" missions, such as the Stabilisation Force (SFOR) in Bosnia or the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, which are endorsed by a UN resolution.

"The United States is attempting to use peacekeeping as a battering ram against the court," Richard Dicker, the legal adviser to Human Rights Watch, said. "As a result of this policy, the United States has sacrificed its moral claim to legitimacy and leadership. This is might-makes-right. This is power over law."

Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, said: "They could have said: ‘Well, you can continue your peacekeeping operations, but there will be no US citizens participating in peacekeeping,' " and that would have been one way to go," he said. "Hopefully, they will find a solution.

"If they do not find a solution, what happens to other mandates that are coming up, including the one in the Middle East, UNIFIL?" The largest US commitment is to the UN mission in Kosovo, which includes 549 American police officers and two military observers. Because Yugoslavia, which has sovereignty over the breakaway region, has ratified the International Criminal Court, these US personnel came under the jurisdiction of the new tribunal yesterday. Unlike other peacekeeping missions, the UN operation in Kosovo was set up indefinitely because of US fears that Russia would block a renewal. As a result, the mission does not need to be renewed and the US cannot shut it down without winning a Security Council vote.

US diplomats insisted yesterday that it was now up to their European allies to back down and grant immunity to peacekeepers if they wanted to save the UN mission in Bosnia, which is being kept alive on life support until tomorrow.

Britain had proposed a compromise invoking Article 16 of the Rome Treaty allowing the Security Council to postpone a prosecution by 12 months, renewable indefinitely.

France suggested that the Security Council could just apply the 12-month postponement to all UN operations and promise to renew it when it expired next year, but Washington rejected the idea, because it would still leave US personnel subject to the jurisdiction of the court.

"The Europeans have not realised how serious we are until now," one US official said. "We gave them three days to come up with something new."

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