Agence France Presse

Friday, September 29, 2000

Annan urges US lawyers to back International Criminal Court

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan appealed to US lawyers Thursday to convince skeptical compatriots of the benefits of the embryonic International Criminal Court (ICC).

"If states do not live by international law, they are condemned to live by the law of the jungle," he told the advisory board of the Harvard Law School at a dinner here.

"That cannot be in the interest of even the greatest power on earth," he said, "for all power has its limits, both in time and space."

Although he mentioned no-one by name, his remarks were aimed at people such as US Senator Jesse Helms, who led efforts to block ratification by the United States of the July 1998 Rome Statute establishing the ICC.

Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, insists that US citizens be exempt from the provisions of the court, which would try people indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Proponents of the court have said its statute prevents it from prosecuting citizens of countries with functioning and effective judicial systems.

Annan recalled that 112 states had signed the Rome Statute and 20 had ratified it, eight of them during this month's UN Millennium Summit.

The statute requires 60 ratifications to come into force.

Helms told the UN Security Council on January 20 that the ICC "claims sovereign authority over American citizens without their consent."

The first US legislator to address the council, he said that no United Nations institution was "competent to judge the foreign policy and national security decisions of the United States."

Annan noted that the United States was "enjoying a period of prosperity and power so remarkable as to lead some of its citizens to question the utility of international law altogether."

But power and prosperity were impossible without law, he said, and global progress required global laws.

Annan also took issue with a scathing observation by Helms that "international law did not defeat Hitler, nor did it win the Cold War."

The UN chief acknowledged that the 20th century had seen "unspeakable horrors committed on an unprecedented scale."

But, he said, this was often because states had lacked the will to enforce laws.

"Serious violations of international humanitarian law went unpunished," he said. "The message sent was one of impunity."

Annan acknowledged that "some governments remain wary" of setting up the ICC.

But he said he was convinced that they did not disagree that it was important to comply with international law and to punish those who were "guilty of the most atrocious crimes known to humanity."

He urged his audience to "help better educate your fellow citizens in the role of international law and in particular in the benefits of an international criminal court."