Bush battles Congress for UN arrears

The US Congress is threatening to block overdue payments to the United Nations, unless a bill is passed to protect US troops from war crimes prosecution by the proposed International Criminal Court at the Hague.

The US owes the UN $582m (more than £400m) under an agreement on longstanding arrears negotiated by President Clinton. But the rightwing Republican leadership in the House of Representatives has made its approval for payment conditional on the White House also endorsing the American Service Members Protection Act.

The act, which was attached to the House version of a state department authorisation bill that contains the UN money, is designed to undermine the 1998 treaty creating the International Criminal Court (ICC), - a world court to judge large-scale human rights abuses - that was signed by President Clinton in his last days in office.

The act bans US troops from serving on UN peacekeeping missions unless given immunity from ICC jurisdiction. Among international lawyers, it has become known as the "Hague Invasion Act" because it also authorises the president to use military force to free any American soldiers taken into ICC custody.

The act would also prevent any US government agency from cooperating with the court and would block military aid to any non-Nato state which ratifies the ICC treaty, which has been signed by 140 governments.

The Clinton administration opposed the treaty at its inception in Rome, but the outgoing president later changed his mind, arguing the US would have more leverage over details of the agreement as a signatory.

The Bush administration is fiercely opposed to the ICC and has even asked lawyers if there is a way of "unsigning" the treaty (an option it also explored and then abandoned in the case of the Kyoto protocol on global warming).

However, it is seeking to derail the Republican act on the grounds that it infringes the president's freedom to make foreign policy, for example by dictating which countries may receive military aid. The White House is also anxious that the overdue UN payments are made before Mr Bush addresses the organisation's general assembly next month.

The administration is trying to persuade its allies that the US is not sliding into unilateralism after its rejection of Kyoto and of a proposed agreement to regulate the trade in small arms, together with its pronounced lack of enthusiasm for the anti-ballistic missile treaty, the comprehensive test ban treaty and the biological weapons convention.

Negotiations are under way between the White House and the House Republican leadership aimed at a compromise.

"We are spending a lot of time trying to persuade people on the Hill to release that $582m prior to the general assembly," a senior administration official told the Washington Post.

The scheduled payment is part of a deal negotiated by President Clinton's envoy to the UN, Richard Holbrooke, last December. The UN agreed to reduce the US share of the organisation's budget in return for payment of nearly $1bn in arrears by the end of this year.

The treaty establishing the ICC never had much chance of ratification by a traditionally isolationist Senate. However, under international law, even a country which has signed but not ratified a treaty "is obliged to refrain from acts which would defeat the object and purpose" of the agreement.

The ICC treaty includes clauses allowing for withdrawal, but the US would have to ratify the accord to qualify.