US: Security Council diplomats said yesterday they would prepare to shut down the UN mission in Bosnia after losing hope Washington would bend on its demand for immunity for US peacekeepers from the new International Criminal Court.
Envoys said the European Union's UN ambassadors had discussed the matter and decided to plan an early shift of responsibility for the mission to the EU, which was to take over at the end of this year in any case.
Despite an international outcry, Washington threatens to shut down peacekeeping missions unless the 15-nation council passes a resolution putting its peacekeepers and other overseas officials beyond the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, which came into force on Monday.
However, Bosnia's Foreign Minister last night claimed that US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell had assured Bosnia that the US would not withdraw its peacekeeping troops in the dispute over the powers of a new world court.
"I talked late last night to Secretary of State Colin Powell and I have to say that that conversation was a great encouragement for me. Mr Powell confirmed to me that Americans will not leave with job unfinished," Mr Zlatko Lagumdzija said.
Four more UN missions are due to come up for renewal in July, including a key operation in the Middle-East that monitors the Israel-Lebanon border.
President Bush has rejected the International Criminal Court as a threat to US sovereignty. His administration insists the US remains vulnerable to politically-motivated or frivolous prosecutions of its personnel who might be based in a country that has ratified the treaty establishing the court.
"We'll try to work out the impasse at the UN, but one thing we're not going to do is sign on to the International Criminal Court," Mr Bush said in Milwaukee yesterday.
The other 14 members of the Security Council and the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, however, insist that adequate safeguards exist to protection Americans abroad.
The mandate of the UN Bosnia mission, a 1,500-strong police training mission which includes 46 US police officers, is set to run out at midnight tonight unless it is renewed by the council.
The US on Sunday vetoed a resolution to extend the mission for six months but then agreed to keep it alive for three more days while diplomats searched for a way out of the impasse.
The new global criminal court was created to pursue heinous wrongdoing such as gross human rights abuses, genocide and war crimes, but only when national courts fail to do so.
Bosnia's international High Representative, Sir Paddy Ashdown, said a shutdown of the UN mission six months before its planned shift to EU responsibility would undermine the chances Bosnia could become "a successful and prosperous country," as the international community hoped.