<

U.S. Troops Continue Bosnia Mission, Despite ICC Concerns
Tuesday, July 2, 2002
By Gerry J. Gilmore
American Forces Press Service

The ICC treaty, the official said, claims to apply even to countries that aren't parties.

WASHINGTON -- AFIS
U.S. troops will continue performing U.N. peacekeeping missions in Bosnia despite senior DoD officials' concerns about the lack of legal protections for American troops under the recently established International Criminal Court.

Established July 1, the ICC was formed to prosecute war criminals and dictators alleged to have committed genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Some 138 countries signed on to create the organization, which is to be based in The Hague, the Netherlands.

However, the U.S. government won't ratify or join the ICC, senior DoD officials said today at a Pentagon briefing. They cited misgivings that the ICC doesn't contain sufficient legal protections for American service members, while implying its reach could also be improperly employed as a political weapon against America. The ICC currently has 74 member-countries.

"Our principal objections to the ICC treaty are that it subjects U.S. nationals -- and in particular the risk is great for our armed forces -- to prosecution by prosecutors in a court that are not accountable to any kind of authority that we could hold accountable as a country," said a senior DoD official at the briefing.

"The ICC treaty creates a situation where our people could be prosecuted for crimes that are defined by the parties to the treaty," he continued, "and nobody in our Congress would have a voice in the definition of those crimes.

"And yet Americans could be prosecuted criminally for violating these purported crimes."
(More: DoD News Source)
2002 © The United States Department of Defense.

Dan