World Court may still decide complaint

Press, 11 April 1984, Page 10

World Court may still decide complaint

NZPA-‘N.Y. Times’ Washington Nicaragua has asked the World Court to declare illegal United States support for guerrilla raids on its territory and what it said was Washington’s role in the mining of Nicaraguan harbours. The State Department said that it had pre-empted the complaint, made in The Hague, by filing papers on Friday to deprive the tribunal of jurisdiction to consider the matter for at least two years. Nicaragua’s American lawyers, including Abram Chayes, a Harvard law professor who was the top State Department lawyer under President John Kennedy, said yesterday that the World Court could still decide the matter because the United States must give six months notice before imposing such a limitation on its consent to the Court’s jurisdiction.

The 15-member World Court, whose formal name is the International Court of Justice, is the main judicial organ of the United Nations. It has no machinery to enforce its decisions, de-

pending instead on moral persuasion and world opinion.

State Department officials acknowledged that this was the first time since the United States joined the World Court in 1946 that it had acted to block resolution ..of a specific dispute. They said that four other countries had done so in the past.

Robert Owen, who was the top State Department lawyer in the last two years of the Carter Administration, said: “This temporary withdrawal will be regarded as a concession that the United States is currently violating international law in its mining of the harbours, and I think there’s a good deal of force to that.” On the other hand, John Norton Moore, a University of Virginia professor of international law, said that it was “perfectly lawful” for the United States to help rebels in Nicaragua in response to the Sandinist Government’s alleged support of Leftist guerrillas in El Salvador.

He also said, as did the State Department, that it was appropriate for the United States to deprive the

World Court of jurisdiction because Nicaragua’s lawsuit was merely a “propaganda exercise” by a country that was itself flouting international law.

The Reagan Administration maintains that Nicaragua is seeking the overthrow of the Salvadorean Government and that consequently, the mining of Nicaraguan harbours is justified as a form of selfdefence for El Salvador and its allies. It has said that it is supporting anti-Govern-ment insurgents in Nicaragua as part of an effort to interdict what it says are arms shipments to Salvadorean guerrillas. The State Department’s spokesman, John Hughes, and other officials said that the United States position was that the best chance for solution to the conflicts in Central America was through regional negotiations, not litigation before the World Court.

They said that the United States would be handicapped in defending its actions in the Court because it did not want to reveal secret Intelligence sources and methods about Nicaraguan subversion in El Salvador.

Despite that, a State Department official said at a briefing yesterday that the United States would go to The Hague to persuade the World Court not to assert jurisdiction, and would abide by the Court’s decision of the jurisdictional issue.

In a statement released by its embassy in Washington, Nicaragua said that its suit, “asserts that the U.S. Government is training, supplying and directing miltary and paramilitary actions against the people and Government of Nicaragua resulting in extensive loss of lives and property,” in an effort, “to overthrow or destabilise the Government of Nicaragua.” Excerpts of the complaint were issued in English by the World Court. It said: “The United States of America is using military force against Nicaragua and intervening in Nicaragua’s internal affairs in violation of Nicaragua’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence and of the most fundamental and universally accepted principles of international law.”

The Nicaraguan complaint also said: “The United

States, in breach of its obligation under general and customary international law, has violated and is violating the sovereignty of Nicaragua by armed attacks against Nicaragua by air, land and sea, incursions into Nicaraguan territorial waters, aerial trespass into Nicaraguan airspace, and efforts by direct and indirect means to coerce and intimidate the Government of Nicaragua.”

It also alleged that the United States had illegally “killed, wounded and kidnapped,” citizens of Nicaragua.

The complaint asked the World Court to order immediate cessation of all United States support of operations against the Nicaraguan Government and monetary reparations for the loss of lives and property and economic disruption.

The Rev. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister, said at a news conference in Washington yesterday that, “to dispense with the rule of law in international relations is tantamount to condemning humanity to a future of suffering, death

and destruction.” Father d’Escoto called United States actions in Nicaragua, “a direct assault on the international legal order.” Some members of the United States Congress, particularly opposition Democrats, said that the Administration’s position showed disrespect for international law. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Thomas O’Neill, predicted that the mining, reported to have been implemented with help from the Central Intelligence Agency, would kill President Ronald Reagan’s request for ?US2I million in aid to the Nicaraguan rebels. The Administration refuses to confirm or deny a C.I.A. role. Mr O’Neill said that he believed the Senate-passed aid request would have died anyway in the House, but now, “I can’t conceive of it passing ... “Up to this point I have contended that the Reagan Administration’s secret war against Nicaragua was morally indefensible. Today it is clear that it is legally indefensible, as well.” He said that the Adminis-

tration’s “unfortunate decision” to retract United States acceptance of the Court’s mandatory jurisdiction in cases concerning Central America had undermined, “38 years of United States support for peaceful resolution of disputes between nations.” The Senate Republican leader, Mr Howard Baker and the Democratic leader, Robert Byrd, said that they had not been fully informed about C.I.A. complicity in the mining when the Senate voted last week for Mr Reagan’s aid request for the United States-backed rebels. Mr Byrd called the mining, “an act of terrorism.” The United States publicly supported the mining on Friday and expressed concern to France over a French offer to help remove the mines. United States officials confirm, that Britain has also expressed concern about the mines, arguing that they constituted interference with international transit rights. In London, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Mrs Jeane Kirkpatrick, said that the British and French protests had not been helpful.