The Devil in the UN dock? (Insider Report).

"I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake," explains St. Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons, a dramatization of More's martyrdom. The principle contained in that statement applies to the proposal that Bill Clinton and several of his erstwhile subordinates be indicted for "war crimes" by the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY).

The July 8th Washington Times reported that the ICTY is considering charges against Clinton, as well as Samuel Berger, Anthony Lake, Richard Holbrooke, and Peter Galbraith. The former U.S. officials have been accused of "aiding and abetting indicted Croatian Gen. Ante Gotovina in a 1995 Croatian military operation known as 'Operation Storm.'" That offensive, green-lighted by Galbraith (at the time U.S. ambassador to Croatia), was carried out in conjunction with NATO attacks on Serb positions. Croatian forces also receive material and tactical assistance from Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI), a quasi-private military intelligence firm in Virginia often used to carry out "deniable" missions for the U.S. government. The Croatian offensive resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths and forced migration of at least 150,000 Serb refugees, who resettled (temporarily) in Kosovo. (See "Why Kosovo?" in our May 10, 1999 issue).

Since Clinton and his four would-be co-defendants all belong to the Council on Foreign Relations, it's doubtful that the ICTY would ever arraign them. Furthermore, it appears that the Croatian World Congress is using the demand as leverage to get the UN tribunal to drop its indictment of Gen. Gotovina. Nonetheless, this development potently illustrates the dangers posed to U.S. citizens by UN tribunals. Satisfying though it may be to see Bill Clinton in the dock at The Hague, Americans should oppose any effort to bring about such a spectacle.