 |
| |
Problems without Passports
FORMER US SECRETARY OF STATE MADELEINE ALBRIGHT
Can I turn to the subject of international justice because the international war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia was largely your idea, what was your thinking when you began to push for it?
Well the point here was that, especially when you're involved with something as grim as ethnic cleansing or genocide, that there is a tendency to blame an entire peoples or an entire nation for having had something happen, which is not really conducive to reconciliation after the horrors are over. And the purpose of the War Crimes Tribunal was basically to be able to assign individual guilt in order to expunge collective guilt. And that it would be possible for the perpetrators of the crimes to be identified and punished so that not everybody felt they were a part of it and reconciliation would be possible. That was the basic philosophy behind it.
When it was first talked about, well I won't say people laughed about it because it was a very serious subject, but a lot of people treated it with considerable scepticism and very few people at that stage believed that we'd see someone like Milosevic on trial. Were you confident that it could work?
Well I had very good people working with me on this who were very confident, as was I. Well I thought it was a great idea but you are absolutely right. I mean what happened, just to give you a little train of thought here, what happened was we voted it and then people said "you're never going to be able to find how the judges were going to be elected", you know, who were going to be the judges. So we managed to elect a slate of judges including, if I may say so proudly, two women judges because part of the problem was the most of the crimes had been committed against women. And one of my great success stories was that I had gotten the women permanent representatives together where I had originally thought there would be some large number - there being 183 countries in the UN - and only six other women showed up. So this very powerful group, and we called ourselves the G7, started lobbying in order to get women judges and we did manage to get two women judges on that first slate. So the judges were elected. Then the question was "you'd never get a prosecutor". And there were lots of arguments within the Security Council because Russia and the Muslim countries that were represented said that there could never be a member of Nato. Then the member of Nato didn't want to have a Muslim judge. I mean there were all kinds of non-starters on this. Then we did come, we came up with Richard Goldstone who was almost out of central casting. I mean somebody that had been part of the constitutional court in South Africa and had dealt with a number of very difficult issues. So we got the prosecutor. Then, actually there was the whole issue of where it would be and who would pay for it, how would it ever work? But we managed to get various countries, mainly the United States, to second people to work on it. So that all started. Then people said "there would never be any indictments". But there were indictments. And then people said "nobody would ever end up in the court" - and they did. Then they said nobody would ever be found guilty and go to jail. And all that has happened. So while there was scepticism I thought, and I obviously wasn't alone in this, I thought it was a really good idea. And I think it really is.
How important was it that it had a UN mandate, to avoid the accusation that it was victor's justice?
I think it was very important that it had a UN mandate. This kind of thing had not happened since the Nuremberg trials. There you had quite a different situation and I think the UN aspect of this is very very important.
It only really got its biggest fish, Milosevic, when the United States used diplomatic and economic pressure on what was left of the former Yugoslavia. Is it legitimate to use those kinds of tools in that way do you think?
Well I'm a great believer in using a variety of tools. I've just finished teaching a course on the National security toolbox. And while there are not a lot of tools in it - just in large described as diplomatic, economic and use of force and law enforcement in various combinations - I think one should use everyone you have, especially when you are dealing with somebody who has committed recognised crimes.
Do you think it will ever have Messrs Mladic and Karadzic before it?
I certainly hope you?
Do you think so?
I don't…it require co-operation on the ground and er, yes I do think so ultimately.
From those tribunals flowed the idea of an international criminal court which initially the United States supported didn't it? And what was thinking at that stage, I mean…
Yes, well I'll tell you I supported it.
But as we started talking about it I could understand the problems involved in the fact that the United States has more troops in different places than many other countries. We clearly had very detailed discussions within the administration about it. And the Pentagon was concerned about the exposure of American forces. So we were working, negotiating, continued to be part of the negotiations to see whether we could develop some kind of a way to 1) to get language that would deal with the United States issue and to be a friend of the court. And so while we definitely saw difficulties the thing that we wanted to do was keep negotiating, to be able to work on something that would be acceptable for the US, not walk away from it. And I'm sorry that that is what happened. That doesn't mean that I didn't see difficulties or that the President didn't see difficulties. But I think that while we are an exceptional nation we cannot live by being an exception all the time. And so I am sorry that this happened. But it doesn't mean that it was… My take on it was that there were issues that the US had to deal with but we couldn't do it by dumping it. We had to do it by being a part of the negotiations.
Because looking ahead it's quite difficult to see how you can have a credible system of international justice to deal with these kind of things if the United States isn't part of it?
I agree with that. But the thing that I think that this administration hasn't understood is that the way it's set up is that if your own national laws are capable of dealing with the problem then you don't have to go to the international criminal court. And I clearly believed that the US judicial system was up to of dealing with somebody that we thought might have committed a crime against humanity. So there was a parallelism set up within the treaty of Rome that allowed you to be able to use your national system. And I think that response to it in many ways…I am truly troubled now by the pressure this administration is putting on other countries to sign the Article 98 argument that if you don't sign an agreement that lets the US out of any liability then you don't get any assistance.
| | | |
| |
| | |
Listen