-Caveat Lector-
MIKE SPITZER wrote:
>
> -Caveat Lector-
>
> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,28365,00.html
>
> Analysis: Door Could Be Open for International War Crime Charges Against
> Clinton
>
> FOXNews
> Thursday, June 28, 2001
> By Nathan Brown
>
> Serb authorities are scrambling to respond to the Yugoslavian
> Constitutional Court's freeze on Slobodan Milosevic's extradition.
> Despite the delay, he will likely stand before the International Criminal
> Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, on charges of war crimes.
> More interesting is what Milosevic will not be charged with, and the impact
> on other foreign leaders and military officers around the world.
>
> In the two years since the Kosovo conflict, there has been little evidence
> produced to prove that the former president did, in fact, commit the
> genocide that NATO claimed justified the war. He will now be charged only
> with war crimes. Ironically, the precedent-setting reduction in charges
> would make it easy for international courts to try a variety of foreign
> leaders and military officers, including Americans.
>
> The Kosovo indictment includes persecution and seven instances of murder,
> totaling 340 victims. These murders are classified both as alleged war
> crimes -- violations of the codes and practices of war --
> and as crimes against humanity, defined as severe crimes conducted against
> innocents, often outside the context of war.
>
> But noticeably absent are charges of genocide. This is striking because
> Milosevic's government was blamed for as many as 10,000 killings of ethnic
> Albanians during the opening weeks of the 1999 war for Kosovo. It now
> appears that these mass killings have not been borne out by two years of
> excavations and investigations.
>
> The charges Milosevic must answer to in The Hague are significantly
> different from the charges of genocide leveled by London and Washington
> just two years ago. During the initial weeks of the war, NATO governments
> claimed that the numbers of ethnic Albanian dead and missing ranged in the
> tens of thousands. Eventually, the accepted number of Albanian dead settled
> around 10,000.
>
> The ICTY has exhumed about 4,000 bodies to date, according to a
> spokeswoman. However, many of these bodies have not been definitively
> identified, either as non-combatant ethnic Albanians or otherwise. They may
> be casualties of battle, collateral damage or victims of ethnic infighting.
> More Albanian bodies have recently been discovered in Serbia.
>
> Late in 2000, the ICTY changed its tactic: It shifted from conducting a
> mass search for the killing fields to putting together a case, based on
> available evidence that would convict Milosevic. As a result, the charges
> are certainly somber but of lesser magnitude. Rather than charges of
> genocide, Milosevic would stand trial for war crimes --
> violations of the Geneva Conventions that are comparatively common in
> conflict -- as well as certain crimes against humanity, but not genocide.
>
> The tribunal is helping to set an important and ironic precedent. By
> dropping the genocide charge, the court has set a relatively undemanding
> hurdle for trying heads of state or military leaders. And the ICTY's most
> serious charges -- crimes against humanity -- are not iron-clad in the
> sense that the crimes are not on the scale of, say, Nazi Germany or
> Imperial Japan.
>
> As a result, the threshold for crimes against humanity -- and their
> ferocity -- have been signficantly lowered. If an unpopular but
> democratically elected former leader like Milosevic can be indicted,
> extradited and tried for these crimes, so can many other political leaders
> in a variety of governments around the world.
>
> Every leader who has sent troops into conflict is liable for civilian
> deaths or excessive force. The potential list ranges from influential
> figures like Russian President Vladimir Putin, for Chechnya, to
> lesser-known leaders like Mozambique's Joaquim Chissano, who presided over
> his own country's civil war and remains in power.
>
> On this front, Americans may have some of the greatest legal exposure.
> Former President Clinton ordered U.S. operations in Kosovo, Somalia,
> Afghanistan and Sudan -- all of which resulted in civilian deaths. U.S.
> military officers may face additional legal exposure abroad, as would
> officers in the Canadian, British and Nordic militaries who contribute
> forces to peacekeeping operations.
>
> The one significant trouble international courts will have in enforcing
> this precedent is the lack of an executive arm with which to reach out and
> grab suspects. No court in the world has the ability to coerce China,
> Russia or the United States to hand over a current or former leader. They
> enjoy much more political power than does a country like Chile, unable to
> gain the release of former President Augusto Pinochet.
>
> The indictment process is likely to become more institutionalized. A
> permanent international war crimes tribunal, sponsored by the United
> Nations, is likely to begin operations within a few years. The United
> States is working to hinder its creation, and thus protect its own ability
> to wage war overseas.
>
> Fox News Network, LLC 2001. All rights reserved.
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