Monday, June 12, 2000

United Press International

Pentagon Takes Strong Exception to UN Criminal Court

By PAMELA HESS

Defense Secretary William Cohen says establishing an independent and

international criminal court for human rights violations would be

"intolerable" to the Defense Department if it did not include an exception

for the United States and any other country with a respected judicial system.

"If there are no protections for our soldiers -- we are the ones that are

called upon virtually every time to be deployed all over the world -- then

we would adamantly oppose that," Cohen told reporters en route to Moscow.

As conceived in 1998, when the United Nations first proposed establishing

the court, soldiers and leaders of any country could face criminal charges

and penalties in the court even if their home nations have not agreed to

honor its authority. The United States has not ratified the proposal, which

had overwhelming U.N. approval.

With more than 200,000 U.S. soldiers deployed overseas, opportunities to

manipulate the court to hamstring the United States would abound, Cohen said.

Cohen worries that the court's inquiries would be unchecked by any power --

like the U.N. Security Council, for instance, of which the United States is

a permanent member -- and could be used frivolously against the U.S. troops.

"Our concern is once you have a totally independent international court

that is not under the jurisdiction, supervision or is in any way

influenced, obligated or accountable to a supervisory institution like the

U.N. Security Council, then the potential for allegations to be made

against our soldierscould be frivolous in nature," he said. "You could have

charges brought before The Hague and this, I think, would be very

destructive to our international participation. It would be intolerable as

far as our people our concerned."

NATO faced allegations for months that it had committed war crimes in

Yugoslavia during last year's war, charges that were cleared by the

standing war crimes tribunal only last week after prolonged investigations.

"The very notion that there would be an allegation of war crimes, given

what we went through to protect innocent life, is I think a shape of some

things to come in the way of allegations to come by third parties or

nations that would seek to embarrass or hinder our participation in

international affairs," Cohen said.

He argued that the U.S. military and public criminal justice system should

be adequate to satisfy international concern about troops' conduct of war.

"We have demonstrated over the years wherever there is an allegation of

abuse on the part of a soldier we have a judicial system that will deal

with it very effectively," Cohen said. "As long as we have a respected

judicial system then there should be some insulation factor (for the United

States.)"