To: Doug R who wrote (5542 ) 3/30/2003 3:37:26 PM From: Lazarus_Long Respond to they could be prosecuted for war crimes if military tactics violated humanitarian law. Alternatively, aggrieved states could take the United States and Britain to international courts, complain to the Security Council, or to the U.N. General Assembly Many leading legal experts have rejected attempts by Washington and London to justify a war with Iraq without a new resolution explicitly authorizing force. Amid criticism that 1441 does not explicitly authorize war, they have also argued that military action is legitimized by two other resolutions passed before and after the 1991 Gulf War, although Russia has fiercely rejected this argument. "There is unlikely to be a court case," he said. "Those responsible won't be jailed but they can be made uncomfortable." "Political leaders in due course could be taken to a national court for an act of aggression," Doswald-Beck said. "There is little chance of condemnation by the United Nations because they will be paralyzed by the U.S. veto in the Security Council," she said. Washington and Baghdad do not recognize the International Criminal Court inaugurated last week and it has yet to define a crime of aggression. But it could still try Britain and other U.S. allies that recognize it on any war crimes charges. Other legal experts say international law might have to adapt to take account of new justifications for war such as the humanitarian concerns used to legitimize the Kosovo campaign in 1999 that lacked U.N. support, but is now questioned by few. Writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, George Williams, an international law expert at the University of New South Wales, and Devika Hovell, director of the International Law Project, said setting a new legal precedent was playing with fire. "This decision to wage a just war is based upon an appeal to dangerously subjective standards of morality and the belligerents' conviction that their cause is right. After two world wars, the dangers of this approach are obvious."
