INTERVIEW-EU sees no chance US to accept international court
By Paul Taylor
BRUSSELS, Feb 16 (Reuters) – The United States will never accept a newly established International Criminal Court and the European Union should recognise that and seek practical solutions, the bloc’s foreign policy chief said on Wednesday.
“I don’t think we’re going to make any progress. The sentiments are very profound in the United States, that fellow citizens cannot be judged by a court that is not American,” Javier Solana told Reuters in an interview.
“Maybe it is better not to keep on trying but to try to establish a modus vivendi, knowing that this is not going to be a possibility for the United States, for any president of the United States to change the position.”
The ICC was established in The Hague last year. Many countries, including the 25 European Union states, have said they want it to cut its teeth by trying alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity arising from the Darfur crisis in Sudan.
Pro-government militia are blamed for killings, rape and pillaging in Darfur in which at least 70,000 people are estimated to have died since March and 1.8 million left homeless since fighting began in February 2003.
A United Nations-appointed commission has reported that the Sudan government and its militia allies committed serious crimes in Darfur and said perpetrators should be tried by the ICC.
But Washington has been implacably opposed to the court from the outset, fearing “frivolous” cases being brought against U.S. citizens, including soldiers serving abroad, for example in Iraq or Afghanistan.
The ICC is the world’s first permanent war crimes court, and is based in the same city as the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), established by a U.N. Security Council resolution in 1993 and due to wind up in 2008.
Since Sudan itself is not a signatory to the ICC, and given the opposition of Washington, which is heavily involved in diplomatic efforts to end fighting in Sudan, it would take a Security Council resolution to decide how and where to try Darfur war crimes, Solana said.
“I think in this case they will be more inclined to use the left-over tribunal that was used for Rwanda,” he said, referring to an International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda operating in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha.
“This is what the United States will probably defend in the Security Council,” Solana said. “We will continue to defend the ICC and probably the compromise at the end will be to utilize the Rwandan tribunal.”
The Rwanda tribunal is hearing cases following the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus from April to July 1994.