every single case has been brought against african. people and therefore it seems as though it really is a kind of almost neo imperial or nero or imperialist kind of operation but i think the idea is a sound one and if the other countries of the world that have not joined the i.c.c. eventually do so and that includes my own country as well as china and india and japan a lot of other very important countries in the world if and when that happens then i think we can move toward a. situation of impartial justice but not until everybody joins and participates ok lawrence if i go to you i mean a lot of people are calling it the african criminal court. yes that's right and again these want to some of the issues that the court confronts i mean on the other hand we should be clear that the african nations themselves were supporters of the

court now obviously we've seen some tensions emerge between the african union and the international criminal court the african union has argued that justice actually can be an impediment to some type of peaceful resolution. we've seen members of the african union urged the i.c.c. to dismiss charges against omar bashir the president of sudan. but the fact that the african nations that a tension has emerged again doesn't necessarily impugn the quality of the justice that the i.c.c. is dispensing what i think it does it redoubles the necessity for the i.c.c. to emerge as a court which deals with. human rights abuses in war crimes in theatres all over the world not simply those in africa but the but aren't there you see it moving in that direction studies that result if you're not against it it's

going in that direction that all any evidence. well i think the evidence would be i mean right now we have ad hoc tribunals that were established to deal for example with. war crimes crimes against humanity genocide in the balkans if such an institution had not been created on the ad hoc basis by the u.n. security council and had that kind of event unfolded more recently rather than back in the one nine hundred ninety s. i think we would have very much seen that type of dispute being handed over to the i.c.c. so in that case the i.c.c. would have been intervening in a in europe and not just in africa ok but judge the united nations security council particular the western powers won't let that happen. no of course not and what we've already seen from those ad hoc tribunals is that the last thing that they deliver is impartial justice and the notion that somehow well there's nothing

really wrong with it or that this is a baby steps towards the final goal is an absurdity i mean we've seen in the i.c.t. why. only the serbs have been indicted and convicted and where as the non serbs our nato allies are largely been either not been indicted or how we don't know are they ready to go it is now that the and i could let me finish please let me finish at the i.c.c. we have already seen the same thing happening where gaddafi was indicted arrest warrants issued there's been no investigation into the crimes committed by gaddafi is adversarial there's been no investigation into the murder in captivity of gaddafi and there's been no investigation of the war crimes committed by nato and in the end in the case of the ivory coast again the i.c.c. jumped in issued an arrest warrant for the person that was toppled thanks to french intervention in the ivory coast but the of the people who are now in power in the

ivory coast who even the prosecuting of sulphide said that had committed crimes none of them have been indicted so it's already clear that it's not at all the minister in any kind of impartial justice laurent you want to jump in go ahead this is crossed out. well first of all the one thing was there was just a factual claim being made that the only persons that were indicted before the international criminal tribunal for yugoslavia were serbs and that's simply i mean that just historically false the just the false claim i mean there have been trial i did. which was i thought what i said. but the majority of the. difference is quitting majority acquittal an acquittal most of them had in the equations and very few of those lives to milly's those days the leaders are reasonable as animals and there's usually no way you should have. if if i could please finish what you said i was in a race on this one issue of trying to say that go ahead lawrence well you made an

incorrect claim at first now you're saying now you're saying in fact these people were indicted tried and acquitted well the fact that someone is acquitted is not an example of the failure of impartial justice in fact in many ways it's an example of the success of impartial justice because what that indicates is simply that the prosecutor failed to make his or her case beyond a reasonable doubt and in fact it is the case that you know when you engage in a trial a trial is not a forum for simply venting political grievances it is a form that requires that criminal guilt be proven and that the very fast of what he was going through he was using cases and wrongfully of the errors and also he. meant to that was the. georgia reply and i want to go to you don't prosecute cases yes if you don't prosecute cases properly as was the case with nasir already well of course you're going to come to the conclusion that no proper cases been made and

case of nasir already any number of witnesses who could have been who could have been called by the i c t y as for evidence about his crimes including in general for the morning and including journalists with seen films of his killing and torturing people none of them was called by the i c t y and so of course the eyes of us thought oh well there's not enough evidence to warrant conviction well if you reject the case then obviously you're going to say in one case yes there's plenty of evidence and in other cases no there's no evidence ok bill i want you to jump in. yes i just want to to add. it's worth remembering that the entire concept of crimes against humanity and war crimes was created at the end of world war two and the nuremberg trials and the tokyo trials were certainly not examples of impartial justice they were victor's justice the judges all came from the

countries that had defeated nazi germany and imperial japan but the imp but still we have to recognize that some kind of effort at impartial justice is is necessary it's not perfect and there are always examples of this misuse of power but the alternative is to have no international tribunal present to investigate alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity so it's as i said at the beginning it's a work in progress we've got to have more of the countries of the world joining it but the alternative is just to scrap it and then to allow crimes against humanity and other violent crimes to go on but unpunished but to go unpunished all of the time ok been the i.c.c.

isn't doing anything about it. well if i'm going to run and able to convict i don't think we can say they go on ok gentlemen we're going to go to a short break we're going to continue our conversation the war crimes committed by the united states and its allies after a short break we'll continue our discussion of the search for international justice day with.

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the first. welcome back to cross talk about two months we're talking about the international criminal court. bill don't you find it very problematic that the united states likes to support the

i.c.c. against its enemies but it's not a member of it and will not join it it's hypocrisy absolutely. yeah. that is a very appropriate allegation of hypocrisy and i have spoken out publicly in favor of the u.s. joining the i.c.c. i think it's outrageous that we claim to be a country devoted to the principles of a flawed justice and equity and yet do not join an international organization. that upholds those principles the i.c.c. was created largely as a result of pressure being brought by n.g.o.s such as human rights watch and amnesty international and so forth. the governments were not pressing the governments were brought into it but the problem is is that many of the important countries of the world the great powers of the world if you will including the

united states china japan india and so forth have refused to join it and as long as those countries are repudiating the i.c.c. it loses its credibility ok lawrence i mean what do you think about this i mean who's going to who looks out to the united states to make sure it doesn't commit war crimes there is no institution impunity well. yes i want to see impunity i mean i do think that you know the united states is a nation of the rule of law and we take that responsibility seriously domestically i agree completely that i look forward to the day that the united states participates in as a member of the i.c.c. i do want to make clear though that there has been a very fundamental shift under the obama administration i mean we should recall that in the windies of the clinton administration united states did sign on to the i.c.c. in an unprecedented move president bush signed us from the room statute and

under the obama administration we've actually been cooperating with the i.c.c. that is very different than the stand it's very different i mean they. are using drones while using these drones killing people the u.s. wants to join the i.c.c. george jump in the united states is more than happy to cooperate with the i.c.c. when the i.c.c. is indicting and prosecuting adversaries of the united states of course it was absolutely delighted when the i.c.c. took on the case of gaddafi and then issued its indictment of gaddafi without any proper investigation and and in due course moreno ocampo put out the most nonsensical propaganda stick statements of the americans such as gaddafi was. feeding his men with viagogo in order to commit rape so yes of course the united states is happy to cooperate when it goes after its adversaries but there is when you look at the united states is it really likely that it's going to accept

jurisdiction by an international court when it is reluctant to prosecute its own crimes even in its domestic courts i mean remember president obama as soon as he was elected and then so we must look forwards not backwards and we've seen that in the cases of torture in which people were killed you know by the cia institute. the torture first of all the u.s. attorney general announced that so long as you were following the d.o.j. legal guidelines then torture was fine and then he said well ok we'll investigate some of the people who have gone beyond the guidelines and even also that he decided there wasn't really enough of a case to answer so no one has been prosecuted for any of the wars in iraq so how likely is it that the americans will one day wake up and say yes yes we will accept i.c.c. jurisdiction over our possible war crimes bill would you like to reply to that.

but i just absolutely agree that the united states and every other country ought to be required to part to participate in the i.c.c. going to and to support a activities and i fully agree. it's only here it's not proper for us to. support. you know indictments of gadhafi and bashir and the other ones and not at least hold ourselves up to the same standard lawrence what do you think about that. yes well i think i'm kind of somewhere between the two positions i agree completely on the other hand i think that for an international criminal court to work there has to be what i would describe as an egregious in a standard built in to prosecutions that is you can't prosecute every single war crime it might be

a nice thing to be able to do but i think at some point you have to say there are trepidations that just goo beyond the pale now i actually would argue that with the americans have done do it doesn't necessarily rise to that egregiousness standard for example one thing that you mentioned is the use of predator drones isn't it have hypocritical that he went about the illegal invasion there iraq i mean that went out in russia poor thing that's egregious isn't but the really but for example i mean yes except that aggression aggression is not a crime that is currently under the jurisdiction of the international criminal court should we might have a grievance shouldn't be there but we can't say that was there criminal action that it be there i personally am not a huge favor of the crime of aggression being something adjudicated before the i.c.c. i think aggression is one of those things which again in nuremberg it was the crime of crimes there's something aspirational be very attractive about coming along and

saying well without a war you don't get war crimes you know crimes against humanity and these other horrible things but the fact of the matter is it is awfully difficult to arrive at a satisfactory legal definition of aggression and i do worry about using the courts simply as a tool to settle political grievances between nations george you want to jump in there. let's go george well yes it's very hard to see how. the invasion and destruction of iraq which u.s. government officials i just don't rumsfeld have admitted to cause the death of some one hundred thousand iraqis how that doesn't reach the threshold of gravity to warrant an investigation of this is warranting an investigation it was no investigation. when moreno ocampo was able to declare after two months of what gadhafi did did indeed merit not only investigation but an indictment

so it's going to it was ridiculous to say well this this doesn't warranted this does and same with in the case of the ivory coast the crimes of one political leader well these do indeed rise to the threshold of gravity but the equal crimes of the others who happen to be the proxies of france or nato they they they don't rise to the threshold of gravity i mean clearly it's making these political decisions and so that's why i totally disagree with the idea that. justice is better than no justice no. a hard justice is worse than no justice because hard justice is a mockery of justice lawrence go ahead reply i think churches room together two separate issues i was a very critic and i remain a view critic of the original invasion of iraq there is still very different from

saying that the invasion is a crime it simply is not at this stage a crime that the international criminal court could consider we have all sorts of reasons to believe that it was an egregious or for ill fated action for the united states to engage it is still different than calling it a crime now as the destruction of georgia much of a figure of one hundred thousand deaths he's talking about one hundred he's talking about one hundred thousand deaths a lot of those deaths the over one. majority was the result of the insurgency within iraq itself now if the united states creek perpetrated unmistakeable war crimes that is not the decision to invade but the way they conducted the war once the invasion took place was a dabbling of you for having some kind of legal response bill you want to jump in there yes importance important to remember that the i.c.c. was set up not to respond to war crimes committed by states but rather to work

crimes committed by individuals we already we already had the international court of justice that deals with disputes between and among states so this whole concept but if you know indicting the guiding united states or any other country for war crimes simply because that's how they are they going on the state's job go ahead george. yeah of course is going out on stage when the moreno ocampo indicted guy dusty it indeed indict him because he was an individual he indicted him because he was the head of state the same way when the i.c.t. why indicts milosevic you don't indict him because he's an individual of the indictment also because he's the head of state of serbia and then head of state of yugoslavia say when he died. she doesn't indict him as an individual but because he's had a slate of bosnian serbs and the same thing with the croatian subs i mean it's totally disingenuous to say that we goes off their individual who are these

individuals individuals or heads of state ok lawrence i want to going to another gear before we end the program is it a deterrent to the i.c.c. to people to commit crimes. you think it were it's working. i don't think we. my own view is that international criminal law the justification for the international criminal law is not so much that it deters future leaders for committing similar kinds of atrocities it might but deterrence is a negative effect it's very very difficult to prove it's very difficult to prove even in a domestic law model so i look at the justification for international criminal prosecutions more as a symbolic gesture on the part of the global community that certain acts are just beyond the pale and i think it performs extremely important symbolic function though again i wouldn't necessarily offer as

a prime justification deterrence it might deter we simply don't know and the fact of course that the i.c.c. is such a young institution also suggests that if there's going to be any kind of deterrence effect that's likely not to kick in whole it has a much more robust rationale may they have to jump in here and we have run out of time fascinating discussion many thanks indeed and i guess in new york boston and she could be and thanks to our viewers for watching us to see you next time and remember stuff. the sun rises over what seems like and lowest forest but here in new directions

quite hundred kilometers north of light of all storms as in much of the world it's disappearing at a catastrophic rate. mockers both illegal and those finding ways to outsmart the system for filing down the forest of the region for them profit goes well beyond the future of our planet and the result could be an ecological crisis the world wildlife fund for nature makes regular trips to help local rangers do what little they can to stop the logging but it's not easy logger set up trucks making them hard to reach in an already rough terrain and have mastered ways to jump through legal loopholes this is a nature reserve we're only sanitary logging of disease trees is allowed according to law and not a single berry can be picked but loggers like this use their sanitary logging permit to cut down absolutely healthy trees and sell the profitable to member over

the border in china we are on the hunt for illegal loggers and it's not going to be easy to forests. and their chances are slim now for now we can stay in our dreams but as soon as we find follett tracks we'll have to drop our wheels and get out silently in order not to scare the loggers off alexander someone in ca has been a ranger for over twenty five years he can spend weeks at a time tracking a single group of loggers easier to work when snow falls in autumn it's impossible to find human tracks and even transport tracks are hard to see after hours of driving we get sent in the right direction by word of mouth you can see that the ground us soft here which means that they have twelve the tractor trails are very fresh which in fact means that we need to be quite. in order to not scare them off as we get closer. this team says they're illegal but have no documents now xander can now call the police to take over his work here is done he

is overwhelmingly outnumbered there are too few rangers working in the promote the region and the w w f says the government isn't doing enough to stop it i guess the government now as i started city for more whole forest legislation so assumes the pals and so on regards a new forest court and according to close up a new low for every for us that's the guys in waltham in the in the forest to the still exist so our forest courts deal doesn't work just do. there's no one tries to stop them in just five years the force will be gone they'll sell it all to china what will the people who live afterwards do. it's a question more and more people are aware of today climate change in the safety of our environment as a whole are being discussed around the world and perhaps it's those small steps that might be a start to people living in harmony with nature. use

them to see. destruction without to see. what could have been just ruins. saved by a great sacrifice. and. understood by human genetics and a remarkable reminder of courage and selflessness and. beauty is if. people. can tell all brushed aside.

well look. it's technology innovations all the latest developments from around russia we've got the future covered. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you don't know.