President Signs War Crimes Treaty

Acting at the last moment Sunday, President Clinton authorized the United States to sign a treaty creating the world's first permanent international war crimes tribunal to bring to justice people accused of crimes against humanity.

The treaty must be ratified by the Senate before U.S. participation in the tribunal becomes final. Fierce opposition to its terms is expected from conservatives led by Sen. Jesse Helms, a Republican from North Carolina.

The president said he acted "to reaffirm our strong support for international accountability and for bringing to justice perpetrators of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity."

"In signing, however, we are not abandoning our concerns about significant flaws in the treaty," the president said. "In particular, we are concerned that when the court comes into existence, it will not only exercise authority over personnel of states that have ratified the treaty, but also claim jurisdiction over personnel of states that have not."

Mr. Clinton acted at Camp David, the presidential retreat in western Maryland where he and his family are spending the last New Year's weekend of his administration.

Sunday was the deadline for countries to sign on to the international criminal court treaty and transmit it to United Nations headquarters in New York. After Sunday, ratification is the only way a government can express support for the treaty or associate itself with it.

"We have a long history of involvement in these issues dating from our participation in the Nuremburg tribunals after World War II," said a White House official, who commented on condition of anonymity.

The court would be the first permanent institution created specifically to try charges of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. At present the United Nations has two specifically targeted and temporary war crimes courts in operation. One deals with suspects from the former Yugoslavia and the other with people implicated in atrocities in Rwanda in 1994.

Treaty supporters contend that a permanent international war crimes court is "the missing link" in the global legal system and say that over the past half-century there have been many instances of war crimes and crimes against humanity that have gone unpunished.

For example, supporters note that no one has ever been held accountable for the alleged genocide in Cambodia in the 1970s when an estimated 2 million people were killed by the Khmer Rouge or for killings in such other countries as Mozambique, Liberia and El Salvador.

Support for a permanent international war crimes tribunal was first expressed in the years immediately after World War II. Interest in creating such a court has been voiced periodically ever since.

The United Nations contends that setting up temporary courts to deal with alleged war crimes in specific countries has been an inadequate response because unavoidable delays lead to such consequences a deteriorated evidence, escaped or vanished witnesses, and witness intimidation.

Some in the United States have expressed concern, however, that U.S. approval of such an international tribunal might subject American citizens to politically motivated prosecutions.

Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has campaigned vigorously against the court. He has pledged to give top priority during the congressional session starting next week to passage of a bill that would bar U.S. cooperation with any such international tribunal.

Helms also has tried to persuade Israel, which also is delaying its decision until the last minute, to reject the international court. In an opinion piece in an Israeli newspaper this month, Helms said that if the court existed now, senior Israeli officials possibly could have been indicted for actions taken to put down the ongoing spasm of anti-Israeli violence by Palestinians.

The United States and Israel were among the handful of countries that did not sign the statute creating the treaty when it was issued in Rome in 1998.

Four countries signed the treaty on Friday — the Bahamas, Mongolia, Tanzania and Uzbekistan — which brings the number to 136.

Twenty-seven have ratified it, and 60 are needed before the treaty can enter into force.

Human rights groups pushed Mr. Clinton on Friday to sign the treaty. Human Rights Watch said "history will look harshly on President Clinton if he fails to sign," and Amnesty International said Mr. Clinton's signature "will demonstrate U.S. support for the rule of law and for equal justice for all."

By Lawrence L. Knutson
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