The Hindu : Belgium to amend law

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jun 24, 2003

International

International

Belgium to amend law

PARIS july 23. Belgium, apparently bowing to American pressure, said on Sunday that it would change a law that has been used to charge U.S. officials with war crimes.

The Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt, said the law would be amended to make it harder to abuse the statute, under which the first President, George Bush, and several members of the current Bush administration have been charged with crimes.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Defence Secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, threatened to withhold American financing for a new North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Belgium if the country did not scrap its law. The United States, he said, would have to reconsider sending top officials to Belgium if they risked being the target of nuisance lawsuits.

The former President, Bush, and the retired Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf as well as the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, and the Secretary of State, Colin L. Powell, are among the Americans who have been the target of lawsuits under the law, which now allows virtually anyone to use Belgian courts to bring war crimes charges against virtually anyone else, regardless of where the supposed crimes were committed. The law was amended in April to allow the Belgian government to dismiss politically motivated cases by transferring them to the defendants' home country. But the U.S. said it was not satisfied with case-by-case resolutions and wanted the law rescinded. — AP

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