Kit Siangs advice on agenda for Powell visit
Foreign Affairs Minister Syed Hamid Albar should urge the United States to ratify the 1998 Rome Treaty to show support for the International Criminal Court (ICC), when he meets with US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
DAP chairperson Lim Kit Siang said this ahead of Powell's scheduled stopover in Malaysia tomorrow.
"Hamid should not just declare Malaysia's opposition to the US demand for immunity from prosecution before the ICC, but should place this at the top of the agenda," he said in a statement.
The DAP leader said the US refusal to ink the Rome Treaty and its demand that US soldiers not be prosecuted before the newly-created court must be censured.
"However, Malaysia's stand can only be credible if the government announces ratification of the treaty itself," he said.
Malaysia is not among the 74 countries which have signed the treaty.
The US had recently threatened to veto the renewal of a United Nations peacekeeping force in Bosnia after the 15-member UN Security Council refused to exempt US soldiers from possible prosecution by the ICC.
However, the council then offered the US a last-minute compromise by agreeing to provide immunity for its soldiers for a year.
Space for civil liberties
Lim said Hamid must also ensure that Powell hears of Malaysia's and the world's concerns about the US stand on various issues such as the war against terrorism, Middle East crisis, and threat to declare war on Iraq.
On the war of terrorism, he said the Malaysian government may not be concerned about the serious erosion of civil liberties in the name of combating terrorism.
However, Lim said Hamid should still convey the unanimous protests of both the Opposition and civil society to Powell over this issue.
He said UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson had recently acknowledged that the US war on terrorism is encouraging less democratic countries to reduce space for human rights in the name of national security.
Abhorrence of unilateralism
Lim further criticised the US position that it would only consider Middle East resolutions that explicitly condemn Palestinian terrorism.
The US administration, he said, is "taking the country's unilateralism to new and irresponsible heights".
"Hamid should express strongly and in a forthright way Malaysia's disappointment with the failure of the (President George W) Bush administration to live up to its claim that it wants to broker a full and fair solution to the Palestinian question," said Lim.
He urged Hamid to question Powell on why the US has exempted itself from practising global standards of human rights that it has been advocating in other countries.
"Hamid must express our government's and people's horror at Bush's obsession for launching a war against Iraq to oust its leader Saddam Hussein. Let it not be said that it takes a rogue state to know a rogue state," he added.
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