RUSSIA'S LEBED WANTS MORE POWER FOR HAGUE TRIBUNAL

WIESBADEN, Germany, June 25 (Reuters) - Russia's Alexander Lebed called on Thursday for the International Court of Justice to be given more powers to deal with war crimes.

The 48-year-old retired general, who helped to end bloody conflicts in two former Soviet republics, said in a speech that uncompromising prosecution of war criminals could help avoid numerous bloody local conflicts.

``When each potential war criminal will imagine himself sitting in the dock, he will think again before he gives an order to start military operations,'' he said at a ceremony here to receive a German peace prize for brokering a 1996 ceasefire ending the Chechen war.

Lebed, seen as a strong potential candidate in the next Russian presidential polls due in 2000, said the international court in The Hague should have a universal mandate to deal with war crimes regardless of where they are committed, rather than limited to specific regions.

Lebed, formerly President Boris Yeltsin's security adviser and now a stern critic of Moscow authorities, said the court should also deal with crimes committed during the Chechen conflict because Russian authorities were unable to do so.

``The Russian justice system is unable, for several reasons, to bring to justice those, who have profited from the war, and in the course of it dealt with prisoners and civilians in an inhuman way,'' he said.

Lebed, who last month won an election on a law and order ticket to become governor of the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk, said Russia could achieve lasting peace in Chechnya and Caucasus only if it cleaned up its own house and clamped down on corruption.

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Johnson's Russia List

#2340

26 June 1998

davidjohnson@erols.com