WASHINGTON — The new international court established by the United
Nations despite U.S. dissent represents the first global treaty binding
on non-signatories.
Delegates from more than 100 countries voted overwhelmingly Friday
to create a permanent international court to try suspected war criminals
and perpetrators of genocide. They rejected U.S. objections to key
provisions, making it unlikely the United States will participate in the
creation or operation of a tribunal it had worked hard to create.
Nevertheless, U.S. residents may still find themselves subject to
indictments and trials by the International Criminal Court. In fact,
nations refusing to sign the treaty will have even less to say about
proceedings than those which do.
The 120-7 vote at a United Nations conference in Rome establishes the
first permanent, standing court with recognized jurisdiction over the
kinds of atrocities that marked conflicts in Rwanda, Cambodia, the
former Yugoslavia and other countries where large numbers of civilians
have been victimized and national legal systems have collapsed.
“The U.N. has declared hunting season on Americans,” said Cliff
Kincaid, president of America’s Survival. “It is claiming the right to
prosecute Americans before a foreign tribunal without the Constitutional
protections of our Bill of Rights.”
Kincaid is the chief organizer of the Coalition for American
Sovereignty and the Bill of Rights, which includes more than 50
organizations opposed to the ICC. Kincaid appeared
with Sen. John Ashcroft, R-MO, former Attorney General Ed Meese, and
others at a June 12 press conference to warn against the ICC. Ashcroft,
chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, has promised
congressional hearings into the treaty.
“The 120-7 vote for the treaty amounts to a declaration of war on our
rights as American citizens,” Kincaid said.
Kincaid, whose 16-page ICC report is available on the World Wide Web
(http://www.usasurvival.org), said Congress has several immediate
options: Termination of foreign aid and other international assistance
to any country which signs this treaty; refusal to pay a phony financial
“debt” to the U.N.; hearings into the abuses of currently operating U.N.
criminal tribunals in Bosnia and Rwanda, and the de-funding of these
tribunals; a flat prohibition on the use of U.S. troops to apprehend
“war criminals” wanted by any U.N. tribunal; and investigations of the
NGOs (non-governmental organizations) which lobbied behind-the-scenes
for the creation of an anti-American ICC.
Kincaid added, “The creation of this court can only lead to more
calls for a complete U.S. withdrawal from the world body. This could
serve as a wake-up call to millions of Americans. It could be the death
wish of the U.N.”
Like the existing, narrowly focused tribunals for Rwanda and the
former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Court will be based in The
Hague. It will have 18 judges from an equal number of countries, each
appointed to a nine-year term, and a full-time prosecutor with
authority to initiate cases. The maximum penalty it will be authorized
to mete out is life imprisonment.
The court will come into existence once 60 nations have ratified the
treaty, which could take years. But the United States will not
participate or accept the court’s jurisdiction, senior officials said,
because of the possibility that the prosecutor and the court might
assert jurisdiction over U.S. troops or other U.S. citizens. According
to observers at the five-week negotiations, the United States exerted
intense pressure on its allies and other negotiators to modify the
agreement. But in a last-minute vote the U.S. position was soundly
rejected, 113-17.
Constitutionalists in the U.S. have pointed out that any such treaty
— even with the amendments supported by the U.S. delegation — would
represent a serious abridgment of national sovereignty. Other critics of
the treaty say the new court will be subject to anti-American political
abuse.
For instance, in the conference publication, “Terra Viva,” former
President George Bush was accused of committing “the single worst
bloodbath of the (Persian Gulf) war: the massacre of some 100,000
retreating Iraqis on the ‘Highway of Death’ by U.S. warplanes, a day
after Saddam Hussein’s government had accepted a Feb. 25 Soviet-brokered
deal to withdraw from Kuwait.”
See U.N. Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the
Establishment of an International Criminal Court —
http://www.un.org/icc/
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