Global Policy Forum

Edith M. Lederer

The United States is committed to ensuring that any Americans participating in U.N. peacekeeping missions are protected from prosecution by the new international war crimes tribunal, U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said Monday.

Last Friday, Negroponte tried to amend a U.N. Security Council resolution creating a new peacekeeping mission in East Timor to exempt prosecution of all U.N. troops by any international tribunal. But he dropped the amendment in the face of strong opposition from other council members - including Britain and France which both have veto power in the council and support the court.

"We put down a marker last week," Negroponte told a group of reporters on Monday. "We definitely want to make clear that when we participate in peacekeeping missions that we intend to seek some kind of exception to international criminal court jurisdiction."

The United States fears American citizens would be subject to frivolous or politically motivated prosecutions by the court. Opponents of the court argue that other countries could use it to try American soldiers for war crimes, in effect threatening U.S.

sovereignty. But supporters contend there are numerous safeguards in the treaty against this including a provision that would give the court jurisdiction over a national of any country only if that country refused to investigate an allegation.

The U.S. administration announced earlier this month that it wants nothing to do with the treaty creating the court or the tribunal itself, which is expected to go into business on July 1 after securing more than the 60 required ratifications last month.

Negroponte said the administration believes "the best way" to protect Americans would be to get "some universal exemption for peacekeeping forces" which is why it proposed the amendment to the East Timor resolution.

But diplomats said France, Britain, Ireland and Norway, which have all ratified the treaty establishing the court, and Colombia, which is in the process of ratification, opposed the U.S. amendment, saying it would undermine the principles on which the tribunal was founded.

China and Singapore are the only nations on the 15-member Security Council that haven't signed the Rome statute creating the court. Former President Clinton signed the treaty but it was never ratified by the Senate and President Bush has made no secret of his opposition to the tribunal.

Negroponte said there were "a variety of ways" to get an exemption if the Security Council wouldn't grant a "universal exemption" for U.N. peacekeepers.

Other possibilities include agreements between the United Nations and the country where U.N. peackeepers would be operating, and bilateral agreements between the United States and the host country for a U.N. mission, he said.

Negroponte said the United States doesn't want the issue "to become some sort of ideological contest between ourselves and the others about the court." "I think that the key point is the issue is still there," Negroponte said. "Obviously we want to deal with it in a way that is the least disruptive possible."

Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican who is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and joined Negroponte at the briefing, said an exemption is "very important for the protection of our people."

"We have to find some accommodation here for our needs," he said. "I think most nations of the world wouldn't want us to pull back ... because it would directly impact security and stability in the world if we started withdrawing and pulling back from peacekeeping missions."

The U.S. Congress controls funding for U.N. peacekeeping missions and withholding money is an option, Hagel said. "We've done it in the past," he said. "I would hope that we could resolve this before it would get to that point where we start threatening to cut off the funding for peacekeeping missions."

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C íŸ 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.