By Barnaby Mason BBC diplomatic correspondent

The US threatened to pull its troops out of peacekeeping duties

The thorny question of whether American peacekeepers should be exempt from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC) raises its head again in a UN Security Council debate due on Thursday.

The hostility of the George Bush administration to the court and Europe's strong support for it threatens to reopen divisions barely healed after the Iraq crisis.

A year ago, the United States threatened to pull its soldiers out of UN peacekeeping missions unless the Security Council guaranteed they would not be prosecuted for war crimes or crimes against humanity by the new, permanent court.

A compromise resolution gave them, in effect, a year's exemption, and that is now up for renewal for another 12 months.

The Americans tried to get the measure renewed without a debate, but European and other governments want to restate their backing for the ICC publicly.

Many of them are not happy about even the limited exemption for American peacekeepers.

Bilateral agreements

The resolution is expected to pass, but the vote may see a reprise of European differences over Iraq - with, for example, Britain and Spain voting for and Germany and France abstaining.

However, the dispute reaches far beyond the Security Council.

Over the past year, the Bush administration has been trying to secure permanent, blanket immunity for the US by another route.

It is signing bilateral agreements with as many countries as possible - nearly 40 so far - under which they promise not to hand over any Americans to the ICC.

Many are small, poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

But it is the pressure to sign up prospective members of the European Union which is most politically sensitive.

Washington is reported to have told countries in the Balkans, notably Croatia, that they stand to forfeit American military or other aid if they refuse to sign immunity deals.

George Bush wants US peacekeepers kept out of the ICC

It is hard to resist such leverage.

In response, the EU sent letters a few weeks ago to prospective member states urging them to abide by EU guidelines in any agreements they signed.

According to the guidelines, exemptions should cover only military or government personnel serving in the country concerned - not all Americans.

This subterranean struggle by proxy has now burst out into the open with the disclosure of a US complaint to EU governments last week.

The note - first published in the Washington Post - expresses dismay that the EU would actively seek to undermine the American immunity campaign by presenting east European countries with a false choice between Europe and the US.

Power politics

As the note puts it: "This will undercut all our efforts to repair and rebuild the transatlantic relationship just as we are taking a turn for the better after a number of difficult months."

Critics of the Bush administration might say it is pursuing its strategy of divide and rule in Europe, seeking once again to enlist the support of those it calls the new Europeans of the east against old Europeans, such as France and Germany.

Britain is trying to keep a low profile, caught between its leading role in setting up the ICC and its close alliance with the US.

The dispute is not only a question of power politics; it is another manifestation of fundamentally-different ways of looking at the world.

The Bush administration resents any encroachment on US sovereignty in matters of justice affecting American citizens.

For most Europeans, and others, the principle is the primacy of international law and whether all countries are equal and accountable before it.