Subject: Battle lines drawn as states discuss UN court http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/story.html?s=z/reuters/980616/international/stories/uncourt_3.html Tuesday June 16 5:31 PM EDT Battle lines drawn as states discuss UN court By Jude Webber ROME (Reuters) - China lashed out Tuesday at the prospect of a world criminal court over which states would have no say and Albania said the most convincing argument for the tribunal was "genocidal massacres" in Kosovo. Battle lines at a U.N. conference to establish an International Criminal Court were drawn as Algeria, India and Pakistan delivered blunt messages and China blocked a briefing at which a Chinese doctor was to have accused it of killing children. In his opening speech to the five-week conference, a Chinese assistant foreign minister, Wang Guangya, said Beijing wanted to make sure the court could not become a political tool "or a means of interfering in other countries' internal affairs." He said the court should act "only with the consent of the countries concerned and should refrain from exercising such jurisdiction when a case is already being investigated, prosecuted or tried by a relevant country," he added. Consent is one of the thorniest issues facing the conference, which also has to work out compromises on how much power a prosecutor should have to initiate proceedings and what role the Security Council should play. The court, which would not have retroactive powers, will try war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The Dutch Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday that the court would be based in The Hague. Albanian Foreign Minister Paskal Milo jolted the conference with a topical tirade, accusing Serbia of ethnic cleansing against ethnic Albanians living in the Serbian province of Kosovo. "We are deeply convinced that the genocidal massacres of the Serbian authorities in Kosovo are a consequence of an institutionalized policy of genocide," he said. A human rights lawyer said France, which with the United States is determined to obtain a Security Council veto, would use its address on Wednesday to advance a key concession. Jelena Pejic of the Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights, said French officials had told her Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine would say Paris accepted an ex officio prosecutor -- with the power to bring proceedings alone. She said Egypt had also relented on this point. "But, France will insist on a state consent regime for war crimes," she told Reuters. The French delegation could not be immediately reached for comment. Pejic said that meant up to five countries -- the state on whose territory the crime was committed, the state which had custody of the suspect, the victim's home state, the accused's home state and the extraditing state -- would have to approve before a war crimes trial could be brought before the ICC. "This is practically impossible and legally untenable," she said, adding international law contained the specific requirement for states to prosecute or extradite. India said that to rush into a treaty with intrusive powers for the prosecutor or Security Council control would result in a "still-born baby." "It is not realistic to conceive of inherent jurisdiction for the ICC," said Dilip Lahiri, an Indian External Affairs Ministry official. At one end of the spectrum, a coalition of 50 "like-minded" states, including Britain, South Africa and Argentina wants a strong, independent court and prosecutor. At the other, a group of states including Iran, Iraq, Algeria, India and Pakistan, wants to keep strong national control over the law. China, with Russia, is seen as a supporter of a third group, fellow Security Council members the United States and France, which refused without cast-iron guarantees and veto power. Washington and Paris are worried that their widely deployed troops could be hauled before the ICC on politically motivated charges. Humanitarian campaigners say that if they have their way, the ICC will be so shackled it will be unable to act. Judge Richard Goldstone, the respected former chief prosecutor at ad hoc U.N. tribunals on Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and former U.S. official Morton Halperin told a news conference it would be better to have an effective court without the United States than an ineffective one with it. U.S. officials say their country is not in the same camp as China but insist Security Council control is the only way to ensure the right cases are referred and the ICC is not unwieldy. Shortly after Wang spoke, a pressure group that campaigns to end violence against children said it had been forced to call off a briefing at the U.N. conference center with victims of alleged abuses in China, Algeria, Argentina, France and Belgium. Officials from the Terre des Hommes group said China had objected because Zhang Shu-Yun, a pediatrician who now lives in London, had planned to detail her experiences working for five years in Shanghai's biggest state-run orphanage.
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