Annan Warns US Against Threatening UN Peacekeeping Operations

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Wednesday wrote to US Secretary of State Colin Powell, warning him against putting the entire UN peacekeeping system atrisk over what he termed as exaggerated US fears of vulnerability to the new International Criminal Court.

Annan, in an unusually blunt letter to Powell, said to his knowledge, no peacekeeper in U.N. history has "been anywhere near the kind of crimes that fall under the jurisdiction of the ICC."

"The issue that the United States is raising in the council is therefore highly improbable with respect to the United Nations peacekeeping operations," said Annan, who was in Vienna on Wednesday.

"At the same time, the whole system of United Nations peacekeeping is being put at risk," he wrote Powell, warning against rushing into solutions to U.S. concerns whose effects "may soon be deeply regretted by all."

Washington has threatened to shut down U.N. peacekeeping missions, one by one, starting with a police training mission in Bosnia, unless the U.N. Security Council passes a resolution putting U.S. peacekeepers beyond the reach of the war crimes tribunal, which came into force on Monday.

(Xinhua News Agency July 4, 2002)