Battle looms over war crimes court

Date: 11/06/1998

By Mark Turner

DIPLOMATS from more than 100 countries will meet in Italy next week to negotiate the creation of an International Criminal Court (ICC).

A core of around 40 countries will call on the rest of the world to endorse a strong, permanent and independent global tribunal with jurisdiction over genocide and war crimes.

This 'like-minded group', which includes 14 EU member states, Canada, and Latin America, will argue for an ICC which could bring the likes of Sadaam Hussein to book without the need for national or United Nations Security Council approval.

On the other side of the fence stand countries such as France and the United States - both of whom fear their military forces could be compromised by an independent ICC - China, Russia, most Islamic states and traditionally non-aligned nations including India and Pakistan.

Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Emma Bonino, a leading pro-ICC campaigner, insists that the post-Cold War world must give potential tyrants everywhere a "strong message that impunity will not be tolerated any more".

In sharp contrast, the US Senate's foreign affairs committee chairman Jesse Helms argues that the ICC would give the UN an absolutely unacceptable "trapping of sovereignty" and that it would be "dead on arrival" in Congress if it did not include a US right of veto.

A global criminal tribunal has been on the international agenda since the 1950s, when the UN set up an International Law Commission to codify principles established by the Nazi war trials at Nuremberg.

This was put on hold as the Cold War intensified, but interest was stimulated once more after the fall of the Iron Curtain, when the ICC proposal was reintroduced by Trinidad and Tobago.

In 1993, the Security Council set up an ad hoc war tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and, a year later, a second court for Rwanda. In the same year, the International Law Commission presented a draft statute for a permanent body.

Since then, the UN has inched its way to the point where nations are now ready for serious talks. Non-governmental champions of the cause such as Amnesty International and No Peace without Justice claim there has never been a better opportunity for progress.

The UK famously performed a U-turn on the matter after Labour's election victory last year. France has finally begun to move on the issue under forceful EU pressure, and many African nations, whose approval could be crucial to the court's effectiveness, have come out firmly in favour of a strong body.

Some creative compromises over core issues such as UN Security Council involvement have even raised hopes that the US could show some flexibility, despite Helms' implacable opposition.

The task is nonetheless immense. Countries are still profoundly divided over the ICC prosecutor's powers, the Security Council's role, the necessity for national consent, the ICC's relationship with national courts, its enforcement mechanisms and how it will all be paid for.

Given this, ICC supporters may have to decide between accepting a watered-down system if it means that more countries will sign up, or agreeing that a limited group of states should press ahead with a tough ICC, as with the Ottawa land-mines treaty, and hope that others will join later.