Washington backs down over immunity for its peace-keepers

The United States has yielded to mounting international protests by making a surprise climbdown in its campaign to win protection for peacekeepers from prosecution by the International Criminal Court.

Instead of pursuing its earlier demand that peacekeepers be given blanket immunity from the new court, Washington is now requesting a one-year temporary exemption.

Diplomats said it marked a major reversal by Washington. But it remained far from clear yesterday whether a new draft US resolution would be enough to satisfy other UN Security Council members, many of whom expressed outrage at the earlier American suggestions.

The resolution, which must be adopted by Monday to save the UN Bosnia peace mission, needs the support of nine of the council's fifteen members to pass. European ambassadors whose countries strongly support the court, said that work still needed to be done. But the French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte, whose country is threatening to abstain rather than veto the resolution outright, said the draft was "a step" in the right direction.

Some diplomats warned that the US may have already done too much damage to earn a reprieve. "If they had proposed this two weeks ago it would have been adopted no problem," one source said. "But because their tactics before were so thuggish, attitudes have been hardened."

Washington had earlier threatened to withdraw its support for the UN peacekeeping mission in Bosnia unless it got its way on the court issue. Since then, the Security Council has barely managed to extend the mission by days.

Washington has already reneged on a commitment made by President Bill Clinton to ratify the treaty that created the court, which came into being on July 1. The squabble arose out of American suspicions that US peacekeeping troops could become targets of its prosecutors.

In its compromise the US makes no reference to blanket immunity. Instead it is asking for a provision whereby the court would defer prosecuting peacekeepers for one year. Thereafter, the Security Council would have a chance to vote to extend that deferment.

For some supporters of the court the plan still risks undermining its founding treaty.

Canada's UN Ambassador Paul Heinbecker showed still little sympathy for the American position. He said: "We have just emerged from a century that witnessed the evils of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Idi Amin, and the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia."

"Surely we have all learned the fundamental lesson of this bloodiest of centres, which is that impunity from prosecution for grievous crimes must end."