Good News from India
The Straits Times reports that US and India sign pact on world tribunal:

NEW DELHI - India and the United States signed a pact yesterday agreeing not to send each other's citizens to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The signing was a victory for Washington in its efforts to scuttle the international tribunal.

The US-India agreement states there will be 'non-extradition of nationals of either country to any international tribunal without the other country's express consent'.

Stand by for the outrage from the ranks of world wingnuttery.

And while we are on the subject UN sponsored kangaroo courts, check out Hans Nichols' report in Insight magazine on U.N. Court Makes Legal Mischief:

Few of the words that President Bill Clinton offered the world have been stenciled onto the sides of buildings. An exception is his declaration that "Arusha is the Geneva of Africa," painted on several walls of the Arusha International Conference Center in Tanzania, home to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). It is here in this safari town, in a grouping of buildings where the electricity is temperamental and the translators are few, that a new first draft of international law is being written. A court press release boasts that the ICTR is "providing a sound foundation" for the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC), which is scheduled to be up and running in February.

If that's the case, the ICC may be more of a disaster than its critics have predicted. While many of the technical snags of the Arusha tribunal's early days -- lack of translators, power failures, computer shortages -- have been remedied, its structural problems remain, according to yet another report from the International Crisis Group, an independent Belgian commission that has monitored the court from its inception.

Even the court's cheerleaders concede that justice here proceeds at a molasses pace. Seven-and-a-half years into its U.N. mandate, the ICTR has convicted a mere eight individuals, three by plea bargain. In the last three years, the court has handed down only one judgment.

But they're having fun doing it!

In fact, several judges at the ICTR don't intend to stay in Arusha and are trying to get appointments to the ICC at The Hague -- a more prestigious posting and in a more comfortable setting. And yet, according to attorneys at the ICTR, the judges -- especially because of their lack of experience and tact -- are the biggest problem. In one oft-cited example, last November judges laughed out loud as the defense attorney cross-examined a witness who repeatedly had been gang-raped over a period of weeks, as she was asked questions such as, "Did you bathe in between?"

Hey, but they have high hopes!

Yet at this conference the problems of the ICTR -- and there are many -- were not on the agenda. Instead, the participants were most excited by a call to hold "IMF [International Monetary Fund] officials criminally accountable in the ICC for giving faulty advice to African countries," as Professor Shadrack B.O. Gutto of the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa suggested. "Yes! Yes!" and a few "Hear, hears" were heard. Then there would be justice, the room assented.

And yet there are US politicians that want to subject our citizens to these international court farces. They should be ashamed.