Canada, Mexico Oppose U.S. Stance on Court

In a rare public alliance against Washington, Canada and Mexico on Wednesday assailed the Bush administration’s bid to shield U.S. peacekeepers from the International Criminal Court, arguing that the effort could damage the tribunal, jeopardize U.N. peacekeeping missions and undermine the Security Council’s authority.

Canadian Ambassador Paul Heinbecker, in a public meeting of the Security Council convened at his government’s request, strongly urged members to reject a U.S. proposal to preemptively halt any future court action against American troops serving as peacekeepers.

Canada challenges the resolution’s legality, he said, because it would in effect amend the treaty that established the court, which began operations this month.

Instead, Heinbecker suggested, the United States should pull out of peacekeeping missions where it cannot secure the legal protection it is seeking through bilateral pacts with host nations. Those agreements are allowable under the court treaty, which the U.S. has not signed.

A U.S. withdrawal from peacekeeping “would be regrettable and would not be without consequence, even significant consequence to those missions,” he said. “But, as the U.S. contributes 704 of 45,159 U.N. peacekeeping personnel, all told, adjustment could be made.”

After the Security Council meeting, the U.S. privately offered a compromise, seen by European diplomats as a significant retreat from its early position, that would seek for a one-year period a guarantee that the court would not “commence or proceed with any investigations or prosecutions involving current or former officials from a contributing state” that is not a signatory to the court treaty.

Previously the U.S. had sought an exemption that would be renewed virtually automatically by the council every year, guaranteeing permanent immunity for American peacekeepers.

Though the U.S. proposal cites a provision of the treaty that allows the council to halt court investigations or trials for up to a year, treaty authors and other court advocates contend that the U.N. body is not empowered to stop tribunal actions that might happen in the future.

The Bush administration fears that American soldiers would face politically motivated or capricious prosecutions. It has threatened to push through an end to U.N. backing for two peacekeeping missions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and perhaps for other missions, unless U.S. personnel are exempted.

Diplomats are trying to resolve the impasse before Monday, when the second--and, according to U.S. officials, final--emergency extension of Bosnian missions is to expire, following an American veto of what was once expected to be a routine six-month renewal.

Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, Mexico’s U.N. ambassador, joined Heinbecker in insisting that the acceptance of the U.S. proposal would set “a dangerous precedent” for after-the-fact Security Council interference with other international treaties.

Like Heinbecker, Aguilar questioned the legal competence of the council to limit the court’s authority.

Canada and Mexico, though normally supportive of the U.S., have domestic political reasons to challenge their superpower neighbor on this sensitive issue. For Canada, long a leading contributor of troops to U.N. missions, any threat to peacekeeping is seen as a threat to its own foreign policy.

Meanwhile, the government of Mexican President Vicente Fox, which is seeking to get the court treaty ratified in its fractious Congress, is pursuing an activist international human rights agenda as a way of distinguishing itself from its strong-arm predecessors.

And Mexico and Canada are hardly alone in their views here: Of the two dozen ambassadors speaking in Wednesday’s debate in the Security Council, only India’s U.N. envoy expressed any support for the U.S. position. Representatives of the European Union, the Latin American bloc and the new African Union challenged American assertions that the tribunal might place U.S. peacekeepers at legal risk.

Advocates of the court fear that Britain and other council powers ultimately will yield to U.S. pressure and agree to some formula protecting peacekeeping personnel who come from nations that have not signed the court treaty.

“If the Europeans conclude that the choice is between the court and peacekeeping, they may decide for peacekeeping,” said William Pace, the head of an international human rights coalition that worked to establish the new global tribunal.

John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., told the council Wednesday, “Failure to address concerns about placing peacekeepers in legal jeopardy before the [International Criminal Court] can impede the provision of peacekeepers to the U.N. It certainly will affect our ability to contribute peacekeepers.”

Britain and France have expressed concern that further U.S. disengagement from its already limited peacekeeping role would undermine the U.N.’s clout.