U.N. Extends U.S. Exemption

The Security Council on Thursday grudgingly approved another one-year exemption for U.S. peacekeepers from prosecution by the newly established International Criminal Court, despite objections from some members that it puts the U.S. outside international law.

Washington had pushed hard for the exemption, saying that its personnel were particularly vulnerable to politically motivated charges, and that it would not participate in peacekeeping operations without immunity. The measure does not, “as some today suggested, elevate an entire category of people above the law,” said U.S. Deputy Ambassador James Cunningham. “The ICC is not ‘the law.’ In our view, it is a fatally flawed institution.”

Although 12 of the council’s 15 members voted for the resolution, France, Germany and Syria abstained to register their opposition, charging that any immunity undermines the court before it has even begun. In statements to the Security Council, several diplomats put the U.S. on notice that the exemption was not designed to be permanent and that Washington was overreaching its legal limits. But a European envoy said privately that most council members dared not vote against the U.S. at a time when transatlantic tensions are still high from the clash over the war in Iraq.

French Deputy Ambassador Michel Duclos, however, said the perception of a permanent exception for the U.S. “can only weaken the court and impair its authority.”

“At the very time the International Criminal Court is being established, we did not consider it appropriate to renew for one year the exemptions,” he said.

Even some of the United States’ closest allies in the Security Council -- Britain and Spain -- disagreed with the U.S. stance. British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock, who negotiated the exemption compromise last year after the U.S. threatened to block all new peacekeeping operations without it, said that the U.S. position put the council in a “difficult situation.”

“Whilst we understand U.S. concerns about the International Criminal Court, we do not share them,” he said.

The ICC, the first permanent global criminal tribunal, was established to prosecute individuals accused of committing crimes against humanity -- genocide, war crimes and systematic human rights abuses -- that occurred after July 2002, when the court came into power.

A total of 90 countries have ratified the treaty creating the court, including five of the council’s 15 members. The court’s 18 judges have been elected, and a chief prosecutor will be sworn in Monday. It will be in operation in The Hague later this year.

The resolution establishing the court last July gave the United States time to negotiate agreements with individual countries to grant immunity to U.S. military and civilian personnel, including non-American employees and contractors. In the last year, Washington has completed immunity contracts with 37 countries, mostly African, Asian and small island nations, and is pursuing others.

But human rights groups say that some of those agreements were made under duress. The American Servicemembers’ Protection Act allows the U.S. to cut off military aid to any country that doesn’t sign the agreement by July 1, putting in precarious political positions the small nations that rely on such aid.

Deep disagreement over the global court has disrupted the Security Council’s tenuous truce after months of division over Iraq. The European Union last week affirmed its support for the ICC and warned states, especially those seeking admission to the union, not to enter into immunity agreements with the U.S.

In response, the United States issued a strongly worded demarche to the EU accusing it of violating an agreement not to lobby membership hopefuls against the bilateral agreements.

Diplomats say that the conflict is fueled as much by resentment over the U.S. trying to create a two-tiered system of justice as by the Security Council’s apparent inability to stand up to the sole superpower.

“This is another example of the United States believing it is an exception to the rules that the rest of the world lives by, and steamrolling the council to get its way,” said a European diplomat. “And right now, there’s not much we can do about it.”