Thursday January 30, 1997

Clinton Renews Call for Standing War Crimes Tribunal

by Peter Baker

[excerpted]

President Clinton yesterday renewed his call for the creation

of a permanent international tribunal to hunt down war criminals

from conflicts around the world, not just in Bosnia, where the

United States and NATO have failed to make an aggressive effort to

bring such criminals to justice.

Clinton revived the concept during a meeting with senior

military officers at the Pentagon, where he rejected the use of

U.S. peacekeeping troops already in place to track down Bosnian

Serb leaders accused of orchestrating a genocidal campaign of

"ethnic cleaning" against the country's Muslim population.

[...]

"We ought to consider whether there should be a permanent

international war crimes tribunal, which, of course, would require

some sort of way of carrying out its mandate," Clinton said in

response to questions to reporters. "If we do that, we need to

look at it not just in terms of Bosnia, but over the long run."

[...]

The notion of setting up a permanent body to prosecute war

crimes, instead of establishing them on a case-by-case basis, as

is now done, has floated around the United Nations for years.

Clinton endorsed the concept in an October 1995 speech, although

at the time his administration opposed a U.N. draft for such an

agency because it wanted a narrow mandate requiring approval from

the U.N. Security Council to pursue cases.

Senior administration officials said the president yesterday

was not launching a new U.S. push to enact a permanent tribunal as

much as signaling his openness to the idea. ....