From an article1:
So when the Azzaman, an independent daily in Baghdad, reported in February that Iraq had joined the "nearly 100 countries that have so far signed the court's treaty," the Bush administration found two of its policies on an apparent collision course.
On the one hand, the administration was touting Iraq's transition to democracy as a model for the Arab world. On the other hand, the Iraqi transitional government was embracing a multilateral treaty that Washington has resisted for years. Worse yet, Iraq's decision raised the possibility that Washington would have to take its diplomatic campaign against the ICC to Baghdad, where the question of responsibility for war crimes is a live issue.
The decision was made at a meeting of interim President Ayad Allawi's cabinet in early January and announced in mid-February, according to translations of Iraqi government documents provided by ICC supporters. Not only was Iraq's joining the ICC "received with glee particularly from local human rights groups" in Iraq, according Azzaman. The French Foreign Ministry was also expressing "satisfaction" with the decision, which it portrayed as an endorsement of French foreign policy.
Iraq's decision, said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, "contributes to the universality which we are seeking for the ICC's statute and attests to Iraq's confidence in the ICC. "
Joining the ICC also made Iraq technicially ineligible for U.S. military assistance. The American Servicemembers' Protection Act forbids U.S. military assistance to countries that join the ICC but also gives the president has the right to waive the ban on military assistance. Since 2002, the United States has asked most the countries of the world to sign what is known as an Article 98 agreement. These bilateral pacts forbid the surrender of U.S. soldiers to ICC jurisdiction. Countries that don't sign risk losing U.S. military assistance.
The United States is not shy about publicizing Article 98 agreements. The State Department announced last week that Angola had become the 100th country to sign one. But the U.S. campaign against the ICC has proven controversial in some countries. In Kenya, for example, the government is now balking at U.S. demands. (
link)
I guess I must still have some idealism left because the way the U.S. is acting about the ICC (withdrawing military assistance from countries that sign up to it, for God's sake!) is a shameful commentary on America today.
Complete text of the article,
Iraq's Flirtation With the ICC, by Jefferson Morley
The story was the stuff of a Bush administration nightmare: "Iraq joins the International Criminal Court."
The ICC is the multilateral judiciary that Washington fears could be used to prosecute U.S. servicemen. Iraq, of course, is the centerpiece of the president's war on terrorism and temporary home to as many as 153,000 U.S. troops, some of whom have been accused of torturing and killing Iraqi civilians.
So when the Azzaman, an independent daily in Baghdad, reported in February that Iraq had joined the "nearly 100 countries that have so far signed the court's treaty," the Bush administration found two of its policies on an apparent collision course.
On the one hand, the administration was touting Iraq's transition to democracy as a model for the Arab world. On the other hand, the Iraqi transitional government was embracing a multilateral treaty that Washington has resisted for years. Worse yet, Iraq's decision raised the possibility that Washington would have to take its diplomatic campaign against the ICC to Baghdad, where the question of responsibility for war crimes is a live issue.
The decision was made at a meeting of interim President Ayad Allawi's cabinet in early January and announced in mid-February, according to translations of Iraqi government documents provided by ICC supporters. Not only was Iraq's joining the ICC "received with glee particularly from local human rights groups" in Iraq, according Azzaman. The French Foreign Ministry was also expressing "satisfaction" with the decision, which it portrayed as an endorsement of French foreign policy.
Iraq's decision, said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, "contributes to the universality which we are seeking for the ICC's statute and attests to Iraq's confidence in the ICC. "
Joining the ICC also made Iraq technicially ineligible for U.S. military assistance. The American Servicemembers' Protection Act forbids U.S. military assistance to countries that join the ICC but also gives the president has the right to waive the ban on military assistance. Since 2002, the United States has asked most the countries of the world to sign what is known as an Article 98 agreement. These bilateral pacts forbid the surrender of U.S. soldiers to ICC jurisdiction. Countries that don't sign risk losing U.S. military assistance.
The United States is not shy about publicizing Article 98 agreements. The State Department announced last week that Angola had become the 100th country to sign one. But the U.S. campaign against the ICC has proven controversial in some countries. In Kenya, for example, the government is now balking at U.S. demands.
The U.S. and Kenya are "headed for a major clash of interests" over the ICC, The East African newsweekly reported on April 25.
"The Kenya government has no intention of exempting anybody or any country under any circumstances," said Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs Moses Wetangula.
U.S. Ambassador William Bellamy replied in The Nation newspaper that ICC supporters were peddling "inaccurate commentaries " about U.S. motives.
Such a debate in the Baghdad press would have tested one of the administration's arguments against the ICC: that it will not deter human rights abusers.
"Why should anyone imagine that bewigged judges in The Hague will succeed where cold steel has failed?" asked John Bolton, the assistant secretary of state who is now Bush's U.N. ambassador-designate, in a 2002 speech. "Holding out the prospect of ICC deterrence to the weak and vulnerable amounts to a cruel joke." Bolton said.
Iraqi public opinion, inflamed by the U.S. military occupation, might have a different view. A recent Azzaman editorial entitled "Murder, American Style!" reported on the funeral of an Iraqi prisoner who died in a U.S.-run prison.
"Almost everyone had a story to tell of the abuses, the atrocities, the violence and massive human rights violations that have accompanied the U.S. invasion," the Baghdad daily said. For such people, "the prospect of ICC deterrence" might be welcome.
But Iraqi supporters of the ICC are going to have to wait. On March 2, Agence France Presse reported that Iraq's interim government would not join the ICC "without offering any explanation."
ICC advocates are wondering if U.S. pressure forced the Iraqi government to change its position.
Iraq's Minister of Human Rights Bakhtiar Amin did not respond to an email request for comment.
The Iraqi Human Rights and Democracy Organization issued an open letter signed by 39 legal activists denouncing the "all-too-clear contradictions and hypocrisy" of the decision to withdraw.
The European Union, reported AFP, expressed the hope that Baghdad "will go back on the decision and that Iraq will adhere to the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court when the time comes."
Cherif Bassiouni, a DePaul University law professor and consultant to the Iraqi tribunal prosecuting Saddam Hussein, says he believes "the decision to repudiate the ICC was done exclusively at the behest of Americans."
"The ICC is one of those quirky U.S. domestic political issues that Iraqis just don't understand," he said. "If the U.S. didn't oppose it [joining the ICC], no one in Iraq would oppose it."
Bassiouni's International Human Rights Law Institute receives funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, but he has tangled with U.S. officials before. He served as the United Nation's human rights envoy to Afghanistan until late last month when the U.N. discontinued his mandate.
U.S. officials said the human rights situation in Afghanistan had improved. Bassiouni told the BBC that he lost the post because of his 24-page report on human rights abuses in Afghanistan.
"US defence officials did not want investigations into the way people were detained without trial by US forces," he said.
On the ICC issue, the Egyptian-born law professor predicted that Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari "won't want to take the U.S. head on unless he wants to ride an anti-American wave. At some point, he might say to the Americans, 'We're going to ratify the ICC and if you want to stay, you better watch out.' That might accelerate the withdrawal of the American troops."
The debate about the Iraq's participation in the ICC is not over, just postponed.
reference=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/12/AR2005041903143_pf.html
The Clipboard: Iraq's Flirtation With the ICC