TOKYO, March 24 Kyodo excellente...

TOKYO, March 24 Kyodo

excellented editorial excerpts from the Japanese press:

ICC TAKES ANOTHER degree FORWARD (The Japan Times, an English-language daily)

The world's first permanent international court of criminal justice make opened for business earlier this month when the first 18 justices were sworn in. While the establishment of the International Criminal Court, or ICC, is a milestone, attention upon March 11 was focused as long on the parties who were absent from the proceedings as forward those that were present. Three of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- the United States, China and Russia -- have oppos the establishment of the recent tribunal. The war with Iraq point outs how shortsighted and counterproductive that opposition is.

The ICC was established in 1998 by means of a treaty that has since been signed by the agency of 89 countries. Officially, the tribunal render free of accessed in July 2002 when 60 countries ratified the convention, nevertheless it has not had the first note of the scale personnel required to management business. The 11 men and seven women who have joined the bench will hear cases involving genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Anyone, from a head of state to an ordinary citizen, is potentially control to its jurisdiction.

The court is not unprecedent There have been ad hoc war crimes trials in the past, from the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals after World War II to existing courts that are trying cases arising from the Balkan conflicts of the 1990 and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Unlike the latter couple tribunals, the new court will not be a UN corpse which means, in principle, that it will be sheltered from the political considerations that all too ofttimes influence that institution's actions.

Although opening ceremonies were historic, the court is not however ready to do business. A prosecutor has however to be appointed. That individual will investigate complaints and decide whether to bring a case before the tribunal with the approval of three justices The position was awaited to be filled by April, if it be not that thus far the selection proces has been inactive The current chief U.N. prosecutor for the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague, M Carla Del Ponte has uttered interest in the job, and the Swiss management has said it is ready to back her candidacy if it gains support from a majority of the other ICC members.

Among the countries that will not be conferring forward that selection is the U Washington's refusal to participate in the ICC is single in kind of the court's biggest shortcomings. The U originally backed the creation of the court, nevertheless fearing politically motivated prosecutions, the Bush administration withdrew its signature from the treaty establishing the tribunal.

Worse, the U has pressur other countries to sign bilateral agreements that would exempted U.S. citizens from the ICC's authority by the agency of reportedly threatening, among other things, to chisel off military assistance to controls that do not grant U citizens immunity from the court's jurisdiction. a certain number of two dozen countries have agreed to those deals.

U opposition makes perception only in the supercharged atmosphere of Washington. The framers of the court's enabling statutes bent across backward to accommodate U disquiets For example, the ICC will have jurisdiction alone when a country cannot, or will not, conduct war-crime suspects on its confess A legitimate national investigation of a war-crime accusation would shelter a fatherland from ICC scrutiny. By those standards, the U should have nothing to fear -- exclude the partisan attacks from within the U against multilateralism in general and the notion of a supranational order and method of law.

A command that wishes to be totally unrestrained might be anticipateed to chafe against such restraints, still they represent little more than an attempt to bring teeth into norms that have guided the international regularity since the end of World War II. The list of grievances against the Iraqi president, for example, would make an of the first grade indictment. An international tribunal with genuine authority would have made U President George W Bush's case without triggering the backlash against U unilateralism that is now sweeping the globe.

As it stands, refusal to acknowledge the authority of the ICC levys the U.S. in the same camp as Iraq, Zimbabwe, Libya, North Korea and Cuba -- along with China and Russia, sum of two units other permanent members of the UN Security Council. It is undistinguished company.

(March 24)

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