UN Bosnia peacekeeping mission extended for 72 hours
After dramatically vetoing a resolution to extend UN peacekeeping in Bosnia, the US agreed to a 72-hour extension to try to find a solution to its demand that its peacekeepers be exempt from prosecution by the new international war crimes tribunal.
US Ambassador John Negroponte joined the other 14 Security Council members yesterday in unanimously approving the extension until midnight Wednesday. Two hours earlier, Mr Negroponte vetoed a much longer extension because it did not include immunity for US peacekeepers.
The US brinkmanship was clearly aimed at underscoring the Bush administration’s vehement opposition to the International Criminal Court, which comes into existence today.
It also underlined Washington’s willingness to stand against virtually all other council members, including its close allies, and to end all UN peacekeeping missions if necessary - not just the Bosnian missions.
Mr Negroponte said he hoped the veto and the brief delay would highlight the importance of the issue to the US, and he stressed that it was not a question of just the Bosnian mission, ‘‘it’s a question of peacekeeping in general’’.
The 14 other council members - including close Britain and France - support the new court and argue that a US exemption would undermine the tribunal and international law.
In the first vote on yesterday, 13 countries voted in favour of extending the mandate for Bosnia’s UN police training mission for six months and the authorisation for the 17,000-strong Nato-led force in the country for a year. Bulgaria abstained.
Mr Negroponte then vetoed the resolution ‘‘with great reluctance,’’ but he said the US government will not ask Americans in UN peacekeeping missions ‘‘to accept the additional risk of political prosecution before a court whose jurisdiction the government of the United States does not accept’’.
‘‘The United States will remain a special target and we cannot have our decisions second-guessed,’’ he said.
Immediately after the resolution was defeated, council members returned to closed-door consultations to try to agree on another resolution that would briefly extend the Bosnian mandate. France and Britain proposed an extension until July 15, but the US would only agree to 72 hours.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the council to intensify high-level negotiations, saying: ‘‘I don’t think this should be beyond the creative minds of all these brilliant lawyers around the world to come up with a solution.’’
Mr Annan, who called the court ‘‘the missing link in the international justice system’’, said he hoped a solution would not ‘‘gut’’ the tribunal or UN peacekeeping operations.
‘‘It would be unfortunate if the peacekeeping tool which has served the world so well, and we are going to need in the future, was to be hampered,’’ he said.
Supporters of the court expressed dismay at the US action, which could affect the 14 other UN peacekeeping missions as their mandates come up for renewal in the Security Council.
‘‘History, I believe, will record the actions of the US administration of President George W Bush to wreck UN peacekeeping and the International Criminal Court as one of the most shameful lows in global US leadership,’’ said William Pace, head of the International Coalition for a Criminal Court, a coalition of over 1,000 organisations supporting the tribunal.
The new court will prosecute those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes that take place on or after July 1, but it will step in only when countries are unwilling or unable to dispense justice themselves.
Former US President Bill Clinton signed the treaty creating the tribunal, but the Bush administration announced in May that it wants nothing to do with the court.
