London agrees to keep Darfur trials out of ICC

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LONDON -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice won backing from Britain yesterday to keep charges of Sudanese crimes against humanity in the Darfur region out of the International Criminal Court.

Although Britain withdrew its earlier support from a European effort to involve the court in Darfur, it insisted that it strongly supports the tribunal.

"Under the ICC statute itself, because Sudan is not a state party to that statute, the matter falls to be decided in the [U.N.] Security Council," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said at a joint press conference with Miss Rice.

London's change of heart shields Washington from accusations that it stands alone against much of the Western world because of politically motivated objections to The Hague-based tribunal.

"American views of the ICC and the dangers of the ICC have, of course, not changed," Miss Rice said during her overseas debut as America's top diplomat. "We are concerned about unaccountable prosecutors and, therefore, unaccountable prosecutions."

Mr. Straw said that the ICC should not take charge of the case without endorsement from the 15-member Security Council, even though the court was set up as an autonomous body that is not accountable to any international organization.

"All of us know that the natural authority of the international community is greatly strengthened where there is a consensus behind a Security Council decision, and that's what we shall be working for to achieve in the Security Council in New York," Mr. Straw said.

At the same time, he said Britain's support for the ICC in general, as a party to its statute, is "long-standing."

The United States refused to back the ICC because of fears that the court will be used for politically motivated prosecutions of U.S. officials and military personnel.

"We have believed that we are better off with regional and local accountability mechanisms like the [International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia] that has dealt with crimes in the Balkans and Yugoslavia," Miss Rice said yesterday.