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US Makes Debut Attendance at Hague War Crimes Court
THE HAGUE - U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues Stephen Rapp made a debut appearance for the United States at the world's war crimes court Thursday and said the U.S. remained wary of politically driven prosecutions.
Stephen Rapp, U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, addresses a news conference in Kenya's capital Nairobi, November 16, 2009. (REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya) The United States is not a signatory to the 2002 Rome treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, and Rapp's attendance at meetings this week and next is the clearest sign yet of Washington engaging with the court.
"Our view has been and remains that should the Rome Statute be amended to include a defined crime of aggression, jurisdiction should follow a Security Council determination that aggression has occurred," he said.
Rapp said however that the United States was keen on "gaining a better understanding of the issues being considered and the workings of the court."
"The court itself has an interest in not being drawn into a political thicket that could threaten its perceived impartiality," he said.
Rapp's attendance comes after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in August it was a "great regret" the United States was not a full ICC signatory.
But Rapp, the former chief prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, said the United States remained concerned about the issue of the crime of aggression since U.S. officials or servicemen and women could risk ICC investigation for their roles in wars due to politically inspired prosecutions.
That was one factor behind Washington's decision not to ratify the Rome Statute.
The issue of crimes of aggression is to be addressed next May in Uganda at a review of the Rome Statute.
William Pace, one of the conveners of a coalition of groups supporting the ICC, said although the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama was not calling Rapp's attendance at the ICC meeting a policy change, he welcomed what was "essentially a constructive speech of re-engagement."
"We are not surprised that every permanent member of the United Nations Security Council wants to keep as much control over the power to determine whether an act of aggression has occurred as they interpret the U.N. charter to give them," he said.
But Pace said most other countries do not believe the Security Council's permanent members should have sole control over determining whether an act of aggression has occurred.
Rapp is leading the U.S. delegation attending the Assembly of States Parties (ASP), which is made up of 110 countries that have ratified the court's founding treaty. The ASP oversees the ICC's activities.
The United States, along with Russia, China and Israel, has not yet ratified the treaty.
Elizabeth Evenson, counsel at the international justice program at Human Rights Watch, dismissed the United States' concerns, stressing the independence of the prosecution and ICC judges.
"We are hoping the U.S. will see that there is nothing in the experience of the ICC that would give them the hesitation to think that this is a politically motivated court," she said.
(Editing by Louise Ireland)
30 Comments so far
Show All"US Makes Debut Attendance at Hague War Crimes Court".
..but not as an accused unfortunately.
"...the Rome Statute be amended to include a defined crime of aggression, jurisdiction should follow a Security Council determination that aggression has occurred," he said."
...so we can veto any charges leveled against us or Israel before they even get to the courts.
a Security Council determination ... so the US can veto. Yep, that's what he said.
Exactly .
the US "appearance" in that court - is to gain "access" and wield its coercive influence to weaken the "determination and process" so that ITS crimes and that of its partner ISRAEL are glossed over. ..as well as "redefining" what crimes are such as leaving out ITS "indefinite detention" , detention upon mere suspicion, conviction upon mere suspicion, suspicion termed as "evidence", redefining "torture" to match ITS definition...
typical - it's so transparent.
it's such a desperate act , really, of trying to shore up its crumbling world "hegemony" project..and a naked attempt to browbeat others to swallow the USA definition of "law and order", of "war and crimes", and force its "american" views on the world at large in which it is the USA is the BIGGEST violator against nations and peoples.
Will someone PLEASE de-escalate on Obama, so he can be impeached in effigy for Bush and BOTH sent straight to Hague?!
Does he think we're all idiots? The US has decided to pursue a national career of aggression and it supports other nations, like Israel, that have already been accused of war crimes. Of course the US wants every definition of "aggression" to pass through the Security Council, so it can veto them all and protect itself and its Israeli co-war criminals. But certain Israelis are not going abroad for vacations since the Gaza war crime, and maybe some Americans will have to vacation at home also.
"Does he think we are all idiots?" Unfortunately,politically speaking; he is correct because most Americans are political idiots!
THE USA "appeared" in the International court of crimes against humanity -
for one reason only...
to UNDERMINE It by building a "presence" to INSERT its OBSTRUCTIONIST agenda and through the presence of its "ambassador" and other personnel try to get TO the representatives of other nations and try to COERCE THEM on the side. just watch ..you'll soon hear news somewhere how the USA tries to or has come up with "independent" agreements with certain countries for their "votes".
it's like the way the USA operates in all other international organizations and relations...its presence is there to "influence" potential "partners" in its SELF_DESCRIBED "international community" to WEAKN organizations that it sees as challenging ITS authority.
it has done that with the UNITED NATIONS.
its presence in these organizations is like ALL its foreign policy:
DESIGNED TO EXPLOIT and render other nations subjects to its will and if they don't....it's going to try to discredit the organization.
its ambassador is there to serve as a stooge, an plainly, a SPY ...making sure that nothing is happening that goes outside of its "attention"...so it can put a clog on the wheels.
of course its dilemma is that
in contrast to other countries like , say, China, Russia, etc..which have their share of repressions and malfeasance and crimes against people in their own histories..the USA ALONE
proclaims itself as the bastion and paragon of VIRTUE and uses THAT "virtue" to go abroad and within its own borders COMMITTING CRIMES against humanity while hectoring and lecturing others against it.
if the others are transparently GUILTY of having committed crimes against people...
the USA is transparentlyk GUILTY of committing crimes against people AS WELL as being hypocritical about it.
THAT"S a big difference.
the court should serve the USA representative a COURT ORDER to bring US leaders to court for leading the world in crimes against humanity.
"Our view has been and remains that should the Rome Statute be amended to include a defined crime of aggression, jurisdiction should follow a Security Council determination that aggression has occurred," he said.
===============
if that is case:
why - there are plenty of determinations that the USA has committed acts of aggression:
IRAQ - based on WMD lies
AFGHANISTAN - based on more lies
PAKISTAN - based on more lies
Latin America - based on undermining other nations, supporting brutal fascistic regimes
Destroying the environment of other countries for Corporate profit
Oil and other Corporations of the USA polluting countries and sickening their people
Torturing people, indefinite detention , detention without cause, just mere suspicion, holding kangaroo courts, assassinations, murder, bombing civilians, bribery of brutal warlords, patronizing theft of elections such as in afhganistan AND in the USA ..
so many of them ...and counting
It could be said that the post-WW2 war crimes trials in Germany and Japan were politically motivated. Hell...Isn't EVERYTHING politically motivated?
Well, what will Israel say to this? I'm sure Bebe is sending orders now to BO about what he can and cannot say.
Not that you're a sexist or antyhing...of course!
Listening today to Obama scolding Cuba and China for their human rights abuses may have hit an all time pinnacle for us. After what we did to the people of Iraq, which tops all other invasions since Attila, it ought to be laughable that the U.S. is even bringing up the topic. Yet, how can U.S. citizens be so separated in these views? Most, maybe 85% of us think we are just peachy. Then, the blogosphere, about 1% of the voters, wants justice. An ocean between us.
This would be like having Hitler 'appear' at a court like the ICC - what a joke! The worst (well, the Zionists are actually worse, but have less influence around the world) perpetrator of crimes against humanity signing its own death warrant? I don't think so. This is just politics as usual - just like most of the posters said - a bid to controlt the ICC and avoid global condemnation for heinous crimes.
armybrat you are probably right that the motivation is to control and contain the court so that it does not go after our war criminals, past and present. It is a dilemma - sign on and be officially subject to the rules or not sign on and possibly be tried in absentia.
Joe
Not a joke. Not a joke at all. The Treaty of Rome should be amended, and we should join in and pursue that. It is no reason for not joining. The search for perfection should not prevent us from doing anything at all. Next step, remove veto power, so dominant powers are not allowed to aggress willy-nilly. We're big enough to live with that and too big not to.
Actually, the USA is too big to participate. As a unit it is absurdly dysfunctional; worse than useless. Functionality would be restored to the region if American States started to send their own representatives as observers. Enough of them present and asking for participation in the ICC and a way will found to allow them to do so.
Perhaps the way to look at it can be derived from an old insult. The world will agree by now that the injunction 'Go home USA!' has great validity. Indeed we can agree that it is necessary to add the word 'NOW!. This can be nicely balanced by the invitation, Welcome Americans!
"Yankee Go Home" has been supplanted by "Yankee Go Hope".
any room on the international criminal court for cheney? has he gained so much weight he won't fit on the dock? how about ariel sharon, the gangster who massacred palestinians all over the place? any room for him should he wake up?
Because George W. Bush was president when the ICC was established, the United States was not going to sign on. It is time that the nation that is based on law and order should use this court to prove that it is not above international laws.
The war in Afghanistan and Iraq have been declared as being started for the wrong reasons, how can we still be allowed to keep it going?
What? Is the US afraid of being next?
Bill Clinton signed on. So did Israel. December 1999.
George W. and Israel unsigned, Spring 2002, and GW tried to get other countries at the UN to unsign before The Rome Statute of the ICC went into permanent effect, in July 2002.
Nobody unsigned, except the U.S. and Israel.
Then we attacked Iraq in 2003.
/cm
"Nobody unsigned, except the U.S. and Israel. Then we attacked Iraq in 2003."
And Israel attacked Lebanon in 2006 for its second destruction of that city's infrastructure (the first was in 1981 or l982) and the deaths of, I believe, 1,600 Lebanese.
And Israel attacked Gaza in 2007, destroying Gaza City's infrastructure, targeting (and killing) hundreds of its civilians, bombing U.N. buildings, using illegal white phosphorous bombs, and then continuing its blockade of essential goods and service until the present day.
The ICC's rules note that any country, organization or (I believe) individual can ask that it investigate and, if appropriate, prosecute those it finds guilty of war crimes, genocide, or other acts.
The ICC assassinated former Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic for the U.S.A.'s real rulers, so the U.S. evidently has nothing to fear from the ICC. And just like the U.S. dominate the UN, the U.S. already does dominate the ICC without even having need to ratify the Rome Statute.
Milosevic was not being tried by the ICC.
The USA's response is no surprise. After all, pretty soon there will be no pictures to share of the torturing we have done in Iraq, Guantanamo (sorry sp?), etc. No pictures of dead civilians killed by drones in Afghanistan. As quickly as possible the USA is forgetting the BUSH/CHENEY/RUMSFELD/RICE/YOO/ETC coalition to get total hegemony of the world. Soon the Sept 11 fiasco will be "proven" to be a plot by Hussein or Al Queda simply because we have tortured those men coming to trial for years now and they have become simpletons.
Well, we aren't there yet but domination of the World via the World Court is on the way....then we will be. Rulers of the World. Whoopie!! We will establish the first fascist world order run by the major corporations of the world with all world heads doing their bidding.
Can we do anything about it? You and me? Not really. Too many people still have their beer, TV, WalMart, etc. and are being bought by the extensions on their un-employment...so no scrabbling for money for them. Just eke by. Nobody really cares because there is no military draft...just the hyperextensions on the economically poor States' National Guard who have segwayed into the Army of No Protest. No, we are watching the end of freedom as we knew it or pretended it was in the USA.
"The United States, along with Russia, China and Israel, has not yet ratified the treaty."
That's some great company to have along. Maybe they can all have a torture party?
http://www.mindwafers.com/news.html
Once again, the US is proving itself to be no better than the governments whose actions we decry. We just cover it up, and the naivite of the masses weight the curtain in place.
In my lifetime, I once wrote during a journaling class, I hope that I see the Equal Rights Amendment passed, a televangelist who shall remain nameless get outed, and Bush and Company get brought up on war crimes charges. My second came true some years ago as I read a tabloid at the supermarket. It gives me hope for the other two.
The fools spoke and they were delighted by the results.
People took the lies they told as truth.
Ha. Ha.
And the lies they told.
Ha. Ha.
The fools were infected by what they thought they had.
Ha. Ha.
Ours, it's all ours. Invincible they thought.
Ha. Ha.
But.
Then something happened they did not expect.
The truth that they had buried and forgotten was one day discovered.
A jagged edge of truth was seen by some journalists sticking up from out of the ground.
And together with the people the journalists dug up the truth and brushed it off and held it up before the fools and said, "you fools, what is this?"
And the fools said, "oh, nothing." But the people continued to ask so the fools said that the truth was not the real thing.
But.
The people didn't listen so easily this time around.
Oh, no.
The people decided to find out for themselves what was real and what was not.
Oh, no.
So the fools started talking louder and buying up newspapers, TV and radio stations so that people could not help but be inundated by their lies.
The fools thought that if the people heard their lies all the time and every time then the people would begin to believe their lies again.
Ha. Ha.
But.
The people now had new sources of information.
Oh, no.
And though the people heard the lies being told over and over, it became transparent to them what the fools were trying to do. That the fools were trying to manipulate them.
Oh, no.
And people don't like that.
And people don't like being lied to.
And the people's capacity to see through wrong and to do right should never be underestimated.
Oh, no.
Elizabeth Evenson, counsel at the international justice program at Human Rights Watch, dismissed the United States' concerns, stressing the independence of the prosecution and ICC judges.
"We are hoping the U.S. will see that there is nothing in the experience of the ICC that would give them the hesitation to think that this is a politically motivated court," she said.
--------------------
Is this lady just totally clueless, or is she trying to put a little bit of pressure on the U.S. from the 1% of Americans that pay attention to what is going on ???