Volume 4, Number 3

January 5, 2001

Clinton Signs ICC Treaty, Handcuffing His President Successor

By Austin Ruse

     (NEW YORK - C-FAM) With only eight hours to go before the midnight deadline on New Year's Eve, representatives of President Bill Clinton met with UN officials on the 32nd floor of UN headquarters in New York and signed the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court. The US thus became the 139th country to sign a document to establish a permanent criminal tribunal.

     While signing the treaty, President Clinton said he was not forwarding the treaty to the US Senate for ratification and was urging his successor George W. Bush also to withhold the document for approval. He said he signed the document so that the US could maintain its negotiating position while the document is finalized in the weeks ahead. And also so that the US could participate in future deliberations of the Assembly of States Parties which the treaty will bring into existence.

     Sources within the US State Department, speaking on conditions of anonymity, contest President Clinton's claims. They insist the US can now and will always be able to participate in court action. Because the ICC document is being negotiated in a series of preparatory committee meetings within the General Assembly, any member of the GA can participate, even those who never sign the treaty. They also point out that as a signatory to the 1998 Rome conference that initiated the ICC process, the US is guaranteed a seat at the court as an observer, even if the US never ratifies the treaty.

     The State Department sources point out the real effect of President Clinton signing the document is to handcuff incoming President George Bush and all future presidents. Under the 1969 Vienna Convention of the Law of Treaties, a signatory to a treaty should do nothing that is inconsistent with the "object and purpose of the treaty." If incoming president George W. Bush, or any future president, decides to attempt to prevent the controversial court from coming into existence, the US would be in violation of the Vienna Convention.

     It is well known that large numbers of the US Senate oppose the treaty, especially Senator Jesse Helms, the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Opposition also comes from the US military. Unwilling to cross swords with the Pentagon, early on President Clinton ceded negotiations of the treaty to high-ranking members of the US armed services working in the Pentagon. Their strategy from the beginning was to negotiate the best treaty possible and then urge the Senate to kill it.

     The treaty is on the fast track to full implementation. An aggressive NGO campaign has generated 27 ratifications already, leaving only 33 before the court is born. Even so, the court is not widely loved. Even usually liberal France, no doubt fearing prosecution for actions in Africa, is nervous about the ICC. During negotiations over the past two years, its negotiators frequently offered and accepted what many perceived as the most radical ideas for the court, including the elimination of the privilege that allows the matter of sacramental confession to remain secret. Other negotiators believe the French wanted the most radical document possible so the new court would be discredited from the very beginning.

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