The Detroit News

January 6, 2001, Saturday

No Unaccountable Court

BYLINE: The Detroit News COURTS; CRIMINALS; TREATIES

In the waning days of his administration, and over the objections of his military advisers, President Bill Clinton has signed a treaty creating a permanent international criminal court. But he took the extraordinary step of noting that the treaty has "significant flaws" and said he would not submit it to the Senate for ratification.

Nevertheless, he said his signature was necessary to "reaffirm our strong support for international accountability." In other words, the president was willing to overlook the flaws to make a gesture that will create difficulties for his successor.

Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush's nominee for defense secretary, has already warned against the treaty. The Senate should make it clear that it has no intention of ratifying the treaty. The court goes into effect if 60 nations ratify the treaty. So far, not quite half that number have done so.

No one, of course, favors ignoring the perpetrators of human rights crimes.

But the American military worries that the court could be a forum for politically motivated prosecutions of U.S. soldiers who police world hot spots. The president said the court would have no jurisdiction over U.S. soldiers unless it is ratified.

But Cornell University international law professor Jeremy Rabkin, in a Wall Street Journal Web site article, contends that the treaty gives the court jurisdiction over an incident if its victims are from a ratifying power, even if the alleged offenders are not. The treaty, if it goes into effect, could place the ultimate control over U.S. service or personnel abroad in the hands of an institution over which this nation has no control.

In the two years of negotiations leading up to Mr. Clinton's treaty signing, American bargainers have sought waivers for troops engaged in United Nations' peace-keeping missions and for more precise definitions of crimes that could subject soldiers and others to the court's jurisdiction to limit the discretion of international prosecutors.

Mr. Clinton says his signature places American negotiators in a better position to obtain these limits. But the bargainers only had two leverage points: the president's signature and U.S. Senate ratification. Mr. Clinton has just given one of those leverage points away.

All wars and conflicts have their share of atrocities. In recent years, America has had a decent record of bringing its own offenders to book.

Perpetrators of atrocities in Vietnam have been prosecuted, as have U.S. airmen who were alleged to have caused deaths in an Italian ski lift two years ago because of alleged negligence.

But they were tried in U.S. military courts by officers who are ultimately accountable to the American president who is accountable to the American people.

That's the kind of accountability required by U.S. democracy -- not a foreign court accountable to no one.

The Issue

Should President Bill Clinton have signed a treaty creating a permanent world criminal court?