Britain unhappy with US over war crimes court
Date: 02-Jul-02
Country: UK
Author: Kate Kelland
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said U.S. refusal to back the ICC, which goes into operation from Monday, was a "serious matter."
"We do not share their view about this," he told BBC radio.
Discussions aimed at trying to change Washington's position on the court were continuing, he said, and Britain would use its closeness to the U.S. to push those talks along.
"What we are involved in is a very detailed and active conversation with the U.S, trying to allay their fears," he said. At the United Nations, the U.S. vetoed a Security Council resolution extending the mandate of the Bosnia U.N. peacekeeping mission after its demand to put U.S. peacekeepers beyond the reach of the global war crimes court was rejected.
The U.S. then relented marginally and backed a second resolution keeping the mission alive until 0400 GMT on Thursday.
A spokesman for Amnesty International said he was deeply disturbed by U.S. insistence on immunity for its own personnel.
"This position undermines the integrity of the international system of justice as a whole," he told Reuters.
Britain's International Development Secretary Clare Short - one of the most outspoken members of Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet - also criticised Washington's long-held stance against the ICC, saying it was "an enormous disappointment".
SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP IN TROUBLE?
But despite a background of disputes about global warming, steel tariffs and the Middle East already souring the Anglo-American "special relationship," Straw played down talk of a growing rift between London and Washington and compared ties to those it has with European Union partners France and Germany.
"We have agreement about values, but sometimes we have the most intense disagreements about specifics," he said. "The nature of a close relationship is that sometimes there will be disagreements. But that is not the test of the relationship. The test of the relationship is how they are resolved."
Blair, who likes to see himself as a bridge between Europe and the U.S., famously promised to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with U.S. President George W Bush after the September 11 attacks, but has found that alliance tested in recent weeks.
This latest dispute comes hot on the heels of a rare public disagreement last week over the role of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat when Blair refused to back Bush's call for Arafat to be removed from power, instead saying it was up to the Palestinians themselves to choose who should lead them.
The rift is also indicative of wider disputes between Washington and the European Union - particularly over U.S. rejection of the Kyoto protocol on combating global warming and on tariffs imposed by Washington on steel imports.