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CNN (with additional material by the Independent). 11 March 2003. War tribunal starts without U.S. THE HAGUE -- The first permanent global war crimes court was inaugurated Tuesday with the swearing in of its first 18 judges. But Washington -- which opposes the tribunal -- stayed away from the ceremony. As U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands looked on, the judges promised to administer justice "impartially and conscientiously." The 11 men and seven women -- elected last month by the court's 89 member countries -- then took their seats at a long table in the 13th-century "Knight's Hall" of the Dutch parliament for the inauguration ceremony. "By the solemn undertaking they have given here in open court, these eleven men and seven women, representing all regions of the world and many different cultures, have made themselves the embodiment of our collective consciences," Annan said. Human rights groups have hail the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the biggest step for world justice since the Nuremberg military tribunal tried Nazi leaders after World War II. Richard Dicker, international justice expert at Human Rights Watch, says: "We believe this to be the most important human rights institution to be created in the last 50 years." But Washington, fearing that American troops could face politically motivated prosecutions, strongly opposes the ICC. U.S. President George W. Bush renounced the 1998 Rome Treaty creating the ICC, even though the administration of his predecessor, Bill Clinton, signed the agreement. The U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, Clifford Sobel, declined an invitation to join Annan and the hundreds of guests -- including presidents, heads of government and foreign ministers -- for Tuesday's celebration. <"We won't be attending the inaugural ceremony because we're not a party to the ICC, and that's basically it," a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in The Hague told Reuters. Instead, Washington has been busy securing 22 bilateral treaties with other countries exempting U.S. citizens from the court's authority, including its power of arrest. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress has enacted legislation giving the president power to use "all means necessary" to free any Americans the court takes into custody. The new law is jokingly referred to as the "Invasion of The Hague Act." The man who signed the treaty on behalf of the United States, former war crimes ambassador David Scheffer, however, was attending. Scheffer told The Associated Press he was "very disappointed" Washington wasn't participating and was forfeiting its chance to take a leadership role in world justice. "It is extremely damaging to U.S. national interests," said Scheffer, now vice president of the U.S. United Nations Association. He dismissed fears in Washington that the court will be biased and anti-American, and said the judges -- 11 men and seven women -- were of the highest integrity and largely from countries allied to America. Likewise, Benjamin Ferencz, a war crimes prosecutor for the United States at Nuremberg, was attending. Ferencz, 82, also has raised his voice against Washington's stance. "The current leadership in the United States seems to have forgotten the lessons we tried to teach the rest of the world," Ferencz wrote on his Web site. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ProletarianNews http://www.utopia2000.org --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.bdn7KI.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html ==^================================================================
