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Pastimes : GET THE U.S. OUT of The U.N NOW! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sandintoes who wrote (197)	7/2/2002 1:30:29 PM
From: Tadsamillionaire	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 411

AMERICA’S conservatives see the creation of the first global criminal court as another step towards a sinister “world government” that threatens US sovereignty. They denounce the new tribunal as a “kangaroo court” set up by a deeply suspect United Nations. “The White House is bowing to conservatives who have a kneejerk reaction to any international body that has even the most remote authority to tell the United States what to do,” The New York Times commented. But the opposition in this case extends across the political spectrum. Congress has taken the extraordinary step of passing legislation that would authorise military action to free any American taken into custody. “Even Hillary Clinton voted for it,” one congressional aide said. “The idea that it’s some right-wing paranoid fear about the International Criminal Court (ICC) is not true. “In the US political context, the supporters of the ICC are a small minority — one fifth of the Senate. The other four fifths were ready to pile in. The court is seen as an assault on the United States and US sovereignty.” As the world’s sole remaining superpower, the United States has the same suspicion as 19th-century Britain did of “foreign entanglements”. This longstanding isolationist tendency prevented the United States from joining the League of Nations and has left it deeply sceptical about the UN, which many conservatives see as an ungodly organisation once dominated by communists and now largely controlled by unreliable Europeans. US negotiators tried and failed to give the UN Security Council control over which cases come before the court, which would have allowed Washington to use its UN veto to block the prosecution of Americans. As a result, the US was not among the 120 states that endorsed the creation of the court at a 1998 conference in Rome. But President Clinton did eventually sign on as his last act in office so that the United States could remain engaged in negotiations. Once it became clear that the court would come into existence without the changes sought by Washington, the Bush Administration told the UN it was “unsigning” the Rome Treaty. William Pace, head of the non-governmental Coalition for the International Criminal Court, said: “What has happened is an international organisation is being established that the United States cannot control through the Security Council. This is the real ideological offence that is being taken. Even though it’s not going to be able to tell the US Government what to do, the fact that US citizens can be subject to international jurisdiction is unacceptable to the United States.” timesonline.co.uk

To: sandintoes who wrote (197)	7/2/2002 10:41:02 PM
From: Tadsamillionaire	Respond to of 411

Under U.S. Threats, Iraq, UN Mull Arms Inspections Tue Jul 2, 4:56 AM ET By Evelyn Leopold VIENNA, July 2 (Reuters) - United Nations ( news - web sites) Secretary-General Kofi Annan ( news - web sites) wants a "decisive" outcome to his talks with Iraq this week, while Baghdad has dampened expectations of a "yes" or "no" answer on the return of U.N. arms inspectors. Iraq, facing U.S. threats to overthrow President Saddam Hussein ( news - web sites), has sent a delegation led by Foreign Minister Naji Sabri to meet Annan in Vienna on Thursday and Friday for the third round of talks this year. The meeting is taking place in the Austrian capital rather than New York after Iraq complained of delays in getting U.S. visas. The arms inspectors, key to suspending 12-year old U.N. sanctions against Baghdad, left on the eve of a U.S.-British bombing campaign in December 1998 and have not been allow to return since to check on any remaining weapons of mass destruction programmes. "We cannot keep talking forever, and I would hope that we will be able to yield some results," Annan said in New York. "I would want to see a decisive meeting." But Iraqi officials are wondering out loud why they should admit the inspectors if the United States wants a "regime change" no matter what they do. President Bush ( news - web sites) has warned Iraq it faces dangerous consequences if it does not allow the inspectors back, fearing Baghdad could pass on its know-how to terrorist groups. At the same time Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has questioned whether the arms experts would be able to uncover hidden weapons even if they were allowed back in the country. Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Aldouri, who is attending the Vienna talks, said in a recent interview that Baghdad was ready to accept the return of the inspectors "in principle," albeit with conditions. Aldouri said Baghdad needed answers to the U.S. threats, the route toward lifting sanctions and an end to the no-flight zones the United States and Britain have imposed on northern and southern Iraq. NO SPIES Iraq also wants assurances no "spies" will be in any inspection teams and that Israel gets rid of its nuclear arms, he said. "We have received some answers to some but not for the most important questions," Aldouri told Reuters. The 15-member U.N. Security Council has not authorized Annan to reply to politically loaded questions, presented by Iraq at the last talks in early May. Despite differences in the council, key members are working to suppress them and are insisting first on a return of the arms experts, who went into Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War ( news - web sites) and spent seven years checking into nuclear, chemical, biological and ballistic arms programmes. Russia, for one, has downplayed its insistence that the United States engage in refining a 1999 council resolution on how the sanctions, imposed when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, should be suspended after the arms inspectors report their findings. Most of Moscow's current proposals would be rejected out of hand by Washington. While some analysts say Baghdad has no incentive to allow the inspectors to return, others say their presence on the ground could stave off a U.S. attack. "It could be their best national defense policy," said Charles Duelfer, the former deputy executive chairman of the U.N. inspection unit. Included in the U.N. delegation at the talks this week will be chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, who attended previous meetings and answered detailed questions on the shape of any future inspections. Also attending will be Mohammed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, U.N. legal counsel Hans Corell and Yuli Vorontsov, the special U.N envoy in charge of issues relating to Kuwait. At the May talks, Iraq offered to return Kuwait's national archives, looted when its troops occupied the emirate in 1990. U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said a "mechanism" for doing so was expected to be agreed on during the Vienna talks. (The way this reads it sounds like the U.N. wants to curtail all U.S. Inspections of Iraq.)(JMHO) story.news.yahoo.com.