International criminal court needed

The Bush administration announced its withdrawal Monday from an international treaty that calls for a permanent international criminal court to try suspected war criminals. President Clinton signed the treaty but never sought the needed Senate ratification that he knew the Senate wouldn't give him if he tried. \nThe court would be a long-term solution to the temporary, conflict-based international courts set up after fighting takes place in certain regions -- like the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Unfortunately, these courts are increasingly necessary to deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity alleged against civilian leaders like former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and military leaders. Atrocities committed in the three wars that resulted from the break-up of Yugoslavia -- in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and recently the Serbian province of Kosovo, and in the bloody fighting between two major ethnic clans in the central African state of Rwanda -- show how important it is for the international community to hold perpetrators responsible for their actions. Ethnic Tutsis, a minority population in Rwanda, held power in the years after Belgium colonial powers pulled out, and sometimes used brutal tactics to hold onto that power. The majority Hutu population eventually grew tired of working hard to make the Tutsis rich, and rebelled, killing every Tutsi found -- man, woman or child. It was a policy of ethnic cleansing, one of totally eliminating an ethnic group, not just displacing it.\nIn the former Yugoslavia, Orthodox Christian Serbs, Catholic Croats and Muslims fought for nearly a decade to secure territory. Serb military and police and paramilitaries were largely to blame for hundreds of thousands of rapes and murders designed to rid areas of Croats and Muslims. Europe and the United States were slow to respond, allowing the fighting to continue in all three conflicts in Yugoslavia and Rwanda. We, too, share in the blame for what we allowed to occur, but the civilian and military leaders who carried out the campaigns of murder, rape and destruction of entire towns and populations should be held directly accountable.\nWhile the international criminal courts for both Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia are doing that in these cases, a permanent criminal court is required to ensure that such atrocities don't occur in the future. All of those who are alleged to have violated international norms -- including war crimes and crimes against humanity -- should be held accountable in an internationally recognized court with universal jurisdiction. The United States should ratify the treaty and live by its conditions. \n