US Deals With ICC
Who blinked?
After a fierce stand-off between Europe and the United State over the International Criminal Court (ICC), the U.S. proposed a one-year immunity from prosecution to all nationals from countries that have not ratified the ICC, hoping to buy time to negotiate agreements that would bar individual governments from surrendering U.S. nationals to the court.
The ICC opened its doors on July 1st in The Hague. The court was established
to prosecute war crimes, genocide, and human rights violations for with the
responsible country did not take action itself. The Rome Statute establishing
the court was signed by 139 countries, and ratified by 76.
President Clinton signed it shortly before leaving office, but the Bush administration
revoked the signature in May. Both administrations had considerable misgivings
about the vague language used to define the criminal activities such as "aggression."
The U.S. charged that the unrestrained ICC would subject American military personnel
and peace keepers to politically motivated prosecution.
The Europeans charged that the United States was fully engaged in the Rome
Conference that prepared the ICC, sought all sorts of assurances which it got,
and still revoked its intention to sign. The U.S. was being accused of putting
itself above the law.
The U.S. threatened not to renew UN peacekeeping mandates around the world.
The Bosnia peace keeping mission was beginning to suffer. And just as it seemed
that the U.S. was going to walk away, they made a political maneuver that could
buy themselves some time and keep the dialogue going.
So who blinked ... Who cares?
All sides know that the purpose of this court is too important to give up:
to ensure that genocide and other such crimes against humanity should no longer
go unpunished.
This means that countries like India that fail to bring to justice those who
commit heinous crimes like 1984 will have the ICC to answer to. The court will
only consider crimes committed after July 1, 2002, however. For Sikhs it would
have been better if the ICC were retrospective.