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Politics : Stop the War! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (6129)	4/1/2003 10:14:37 PM
From: Vitas	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21614

The UN Charter doesn’t say the Security Council must explicitly authorize force, said Scott. As a result, international law has developed an unclear language of euphemism. “It’s kind of important to know, however forced and unaccepted a lot of the U.S. interpretations are, they’re not wacky,” said Scott. “They’re not out of bounds on the basic idea that authorization [of force] could potentially be implicit.” Scott noted Security Council resolutions passed in 1990 frequently used phrases such as “all necessary means” or “serious consequences” instead of more concrete terms like “military force” or “war.” “Already, 13 years ago, we have an example of language in a Security Council resolution that is not explicit, or expressed as it could be, in authorizing force,” he noted. Critics of another war in Iraq are placing too much emphasis on the procedural aspects of international law, said University of Toronto law professor Ed Morgan. Based on substantive aspects of international law, “the Americans have a better argument than people think,” he said. For example, Morgan said “developing international custom” might sanction U.S. and British military action against Iraq based on “humanitarian” grounds. “There is some precedent in international law for armed forces being used in order to displace brutally oppressive, human-rights-abusing regimes,” said Morgan. “Many of the most vocal critics [of military action] on the Security Council have engaged in it themselves when they thought there was a proper case for intervention. “I saw the Syrian ambassador — Syria is on the Security Council — condemning the Americans for this use of force [against Iraq]. And we know the Syrians intervened massively in the civil war in Lebanon. Still today, they occupy a portion of Lebanon in order, they say, to keep the peace.” Scott said the United States has taken a different — and novel — tack in its interpretation of international law. He said one “radical” perspective of United States negotiators is that UN Security Council resolutions have the same legal status as international “treaties.” Many times, United States officials said Hussein is in “a material breach” of the conditions laid out in UN resolutions since 1991. The use of the phrase “material breach” is instructive, said Scott. Article 60 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties says “a material breach of a bilateral treaty by one of the parties entitles the other to invoke the breach as a ground for terminating the treaty or suspending its operation in whole or in part.” Based on Iraq’s “material breach” of UN resolutions subsequent to Resolution 687, the United States has claimed all UN resolutions prior to 687 are void or inoperative, said Scott. That renders operative once again Resolution 687, which authorized the use of force against Iraq in 1991. Message 18784388