Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, ordered a freeze on $350 million (£210 million) funding for Nato buildings in Belgium and threatened to pull the alliance headquarters out of the country unless the "absurd" law was scrapped.

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Tuesday 24 June 2003

Belgium restricts war crimes law

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
in Brussels

BELGIUM'S political leaders have agreed to neuter the country's war crimes legislation, which gave its courts a claim to jurisdiction over alleged violations of human rights committed anywhere in the world.

Donald Rumsfeld said the law rendered Belgium unfit to be a host nation to Nato. Embarrassed by war crimes charges against Tony Blair and President George W Bush, the Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, said parliament would restrict the 10-year-old law to cases in which either the victim or the accused were residents of Belgium. That will prevent political agitators using the courts for their own aims.

The climbdown came days after Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, ordered a freeze on $350 million (£210 million) funding for Nato buildings in Belgium and threatened to pull the alliance headquarters out of the country unless the "absurd" law was scrapped. Mr Rumsfeld said the law rendered Belgium unfit to be a host nation to Nato. "Belgium needs to realize that there are consequences to its actions," he said.

Lord Robertson, Nato's secretary-general, said yesterday the deal at the weekend by Belgium's liberals and socialists should be enough to avert a "major crisis".

Most of the key figures in American foreign policy have been ensared by the law, as have Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, who is accused of atrocities in Lebanon, and an eclectic cast ranging from Yasser Arafat to Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein.

Mr Blair and Mr Bush were added to the roster of "war criminals" in a joint lawsuit lodged last Thursday, citing abuses in Iraq. The case was immediately deflected to the British and American courts under an updated version of the law aimed at screening out "abusive complaints". In a final twist, the Belgian foreign minister, Louis Michel, was a target a day later for his role in the sale of machineguns to Nepal. The case was filed by Flemish nationalists to expose his "hypocrisy" for claiming to be a defender of human rights while quietly conducting realpolitik as usual.

He called the suit "mad, ridiculous, irrational and malign", and accused those responsible for it of turning Belgium into the world's laughing stock. While the law had already been modified enough to prevent meaningful prosections of Amercian or allied officials, Washington has seized on the issue to drive home a deeper point and warn Belgium's leaders that they could pay a high price for anti-American posturing.

Diplomats say the Bush administration has not forgiven the Verhofstadt government for hosting a defence summit in April, aimed at creating an autonomous military force outside the Nato command structure. The meeting was attended by France, Germany and Luxembourg.