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U.S.-Israel pact to sidestep war crimes court

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States and Israel plan to sign an agreement protecting each others' troops from possible prosecution by the U.N. war crimes court, State Department officials told CNN on Friday.

Under the agreement, the U.S. and Israel would agree not to hand over any of each others' peacekeepers wanted by the International Criminal Court. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton is leaving Europe for Jerusalem for the Sunday signing ceremony.

A provision of the treaty that created the court says that a bilateral agreement between two countries overrides the international court's jurisdiction when the court has charged a peacekeeper stationed in one of the two countries.

In an attempt to circumvent the court's jurisdiction, senior officials tell CNN that the Bush administration is in the process of negotiating such bilateral agreements with every country with whom it has diplomatic relations.

The agreement is the second worked out this week: Bolton was in the Romanian capital Bucharest on Thursday to sign the first so-called "Article 98" agreement with Romania.

The international court was established by treaty on July 1. It is the first permanent tribunal capable of trying individuals for the most serious war crimes and other violations of international human rights law, including genocide.

President Clinton signed the treaty before he left office, but the Bush administration withdrew from the agreement and refuses to submit it to the Senate for ratification. The current administration says the treaty does not go far enough to avoid the risk of politically motivated prosecutions.

In July, the U.N. Security Council agreed to exempt U.S. peacekeepers from the court's jurisdiction for a year. The vote gave U.S. troops some protection from the newly established International Criminal Court, but the exemption fell short of the blanket immunity the Bush administration had sought for American troops serving in U.N. peacekeeping missions.

In the compromise, the United States got a one-year suspension of investigations or prosecutions by the court for any U.S. peacekeepers accused of war crimes on U.N.-approved missions. The Security Council also pledged to renew the suspension each year.

As a result of the agreement, the United States agreed to lift its opposition to the renewal of any peacekeeping missions. In late June, the Bush administration vetoed a renewal of the Bosnian mission to force a compromise over the issue.