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World court fear { July 2 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-344149,00.htmlhttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-344149,00.html
July 02, 2002
Congress unites in fear of world 'government'
From James Bone in New York
AMERICA’S conservatives see the creation of the first global criminal court as another step towards a sinister “world government” that threatens US sovereignty.
They denounce the new tribunal as a “kangaroo court” set up by a deeply suspect United Nations. “The White House is bowing to conservatives who have a kneejerk reaction to any international body that has even the most remote authority to tell the United States what to do,” The New York Times commented.
But the opposition in this case extends across the political spectrum. Congress has taken the extraordinary step of passing legislation that would authorise military action to free any American taken into custody. “Even Hillary Clinton voted for it,” one congressional aide said. “The idea that it’s some right-wing paranoid fear about the International Criminal Court (ICC) is not true.
“In the US political context, the supporters of the ICC are a small minority — one fifth of the Senate. The other four fifths were ready to pile in. The court is seen as an assault on the United States and US sovereignty.”
As the world’s sole remaining superpower, the United States has the same suspicion as 19th-century Britain did of “foreign entanglements”. This longstanding isolationist tendency prevented the United States from joining the League of Nations and has left it deeply sceptical about the UN, which many conservatives see as an ungodly organisation once dominated by communists and now largely controlled by unreliable Europeans.
US negotiators tried and failed to give the UN Security Council control over which cases come before the court, which would have allowed Washington to use its UN veto to block the prosecution of Americans.
As a result, the US was not among the 120 states that endorsed the creation of the court at a 1998 conference in Rome. But President Clinton did eventually sign on as his last act in office so that the United States could remain engaged in negotiations.
Once it became clear that the court would come into existence without the changes sought by Washington, the Bush Administration told the UN it was “unsigning” the Rome Treaty.
William Pace, head of the non-governmental Coalition for the International Criminal Court, said: “What has happened is an international organisation is being established that the United States cannot control through the Security Council. This is the real ideological offence that is being taken. Even though it’s not going to be able to tell the US Government what to do, the fact that US citizens can be subject to international jurisdiction is unacceptable to the United States.”
Because the new tribunal has jurisdiction over crimes that take place on the territory of a state party, American nationals might be brought to justice even though the United States rejects the court.
While the Pentagon worries that American soldiers might be prosecuted for purely political motives — that was the reason given for the vetoing the UN mission in Bosnia — there is an equally compelling fear driving US policy.
In the wake of Britain’s arrest of Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator, the attempted legal action in Belgium against Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, and the renewed controversy over Henry Kissinger’s role in the Vietnam War, Washington is also concerned that former ministers might be the targets of prosecution. Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, for instance, might be arrested while travelling abroad on spurious charges stemming from the War on Terror.
“Americans, by virtue of America’s international reach, certainly would become in due course the foremost targets,” the Dallas Morning News said.
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