BRICS ministers put on show of strength as Putin arrest warrant looms large

Reuters:

BRICS ministers put on show of strength as Putin arrest warrant looms large

June 2, 20235:17 AM GMT+10

China's Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu, Brazil's Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira, South Africa's Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and India's Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar attend a BRICS foreign ministers meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, June 1


Summary

• BRICS foreign ministers meeting in Cape Town for two days
• State ambition to compete with West on global stage
• Questions over potential Putin visit for August summit
• South Africa in tight spot due to arrest warrant for Putin

CAPE TOWN, June 1 (Reuters) - BRICS foreign ministers on Thursday asserted their bloc's ambition to rival Western powers but their talks in South Africa were overshadowed by questions over whether Russia's president would be arrested if he attended a summit in August.

South Africa's foreign minister Naledi Pandor said her country was mulling options if Vladimir Putin, the subject of a war crimes arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC), came to the planned BRICS summit in Johannesburg.


As a member of the ICC, South Africa would theoretically be required to arrest Putin, and Pandor was bombarded with questions about that as she arrived for a first round of talks with representatives from Brazil, Russia, India and China.

"The answer is the president (Cyril Ramaphosa) will indicate what the final position of South Africa is. As matters stand an invitation has been issued to all (BRICS) heads of state," she said.

At a news conference later, the ministers side-stepped a barrage of questions about the Putin issue.


The ICC accused Putin in March of the war crime of forcibly deporting children from Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine. Moscow denies the allegations. South Africa had invited Putin in January.

Putin has not confirmed his plans, with the Kremlin only saying Russia would take part at the "proper level".

The ministers sought to focus attention on their ambition to build up their influence in a multi-polar world.

India's Subrahmanyam Jaishankar spoke of the concentration of economic power which he said "leaves too many nations at the mercy of too few", and of the need to reform global decision-making including by the United Nations Security Council.

"Old ways cannot address new situations. We are a symbol of change. We must act," he said.

ENLARGEMENT

Once viewed as a loose association of disparate emerging economies, BRICS has in recent years taken more concrete shape, driven initially by Beijing and, since the start of the Ukraine war in February 2022, with added impetus from Moscow.


The bloc launched a New Development Bank in 2015, though that has stopped funding projects in Russia to comply with sanctions imposed by Western countries following the invasion of Ukraine.

Pandor said a senior executive from the bank had briefed the ministers about "the potential use of alternative currencies to the current internationally traded currencies".

She said the aim was "to ensure that we do not become victim to sanctions that have secondary effects on countries that have no involvement in issues that have led to those unilateral sanctions".

The ministers also discussed plans to potentially admit new members to the club. Pandor said more work was needed to make that possible and she hoped a report on the matter would be ready by the August summit.

China's Vice Minister Ma Zhaoxu said his country was happy about the prospect of more countries joining BRICS as it would increase the influence of the bloc and give it more power to serve the interests of developing countries.

The BRICS bloc "was inclusive ... in sharp contrast to some countries' small circle, and so I believe the enlargement of BRICS will be beneficial to the BRICS countries," he said.

Iran's Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud were both present in Cape Town to participate in the BRICS meeting, which continues on Friday.

Their two countries, along with Venezuela, Argentina, Algeria and the United Arab Emirates are among those that have either formally applied to join BRICS or expressed interest, officials said.

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kt comments:

Double-standard ICC dares not charge former US President George Bush, former Britain PM Tony Blair and former Australian PM John Howard of criminal attack & invasion of Iraq based on non-justified reasons and fabricated lies, and the consequential slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and displacing millions of Iraqi refugees even until today.

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Truthout:

For 20 Years, Team Bush Has Escaped Prosecution for Their War Crimes in Iraq


One year after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the International Criminal Court charged him with war crimes.

By Marjorie Cohn , TRUTHOUT

Published March 20, 2023

President George W. Bush addresses military personnel and coalition forces at U.S. Camp Arifjan, 35 miles south of Kuwait City, on January 12, 2008.MANDEL NGAN / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES


Extracts only:


Today, Iraqis mark the 20th anniversary of the horrific U.S.-U.K. bombing of Baghdad, dubbed “Shock and Awe.” In rapid succession, “coalition forces” dropped 3,000 bombs, including many that weighed 2,000 pounds, on Baghdad in what The New York Times called “almost biblical power.”

Although they launched an illegal war of aggression and committed war crimes in Iraq, 20 years later the leaders of the U.S. and the U.K. have never faced criminal accountability. By contrast, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has already charged Russian President Vladimir Putin with war crimes just one year after his unlawful invasion of Ukraine. He is the first non-African leader to be charged by the ICC, which frequently succumbs to pressure from the United States.

In what came to be called “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” 173,000 troops from the United States and the United Kingdom invaded Iraq. During the eight-year war, about 300,000 Iraqis and 4,600 Americans were killed. The United States spent $815 billion on the war, not counting indirect costs. It plunged the country into a civil war and millions of Iraqi refugees remain displaced. Two decades later, not one of the officials responsible has been brought to justice.


Invading Iraq Was an Act of Aggression

Sources within his administration have confirmed that George W. Bush was planning to invade Iraq and execute regime change long before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The U.S.-led invasion violated the United Nations Charter, which authorizes countries to use military force against other countries only in self-defense or with approval by the UN Security Council.

The attack on Iraq didn’t satisfy either of these conditions and was therefore an act of aggression. After the Holocaust, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg wrote, “To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

***

Guardian:


Netanyahu calls for sanctions over ICC war crimes investigation

Israeli PM condemns ‘travesty’ after court said it intended to look at alleged incidents


21 Jan 2020 14.33 GMT


Benjamin Netanyahu has called for sanctions against the international criminal court and people who work for it, a month after its chief prosecutor announced she intended to investigate alleged Israeli war crimes.

“I think that everybody should rise up against this,” the Israeli prime minister said in an interview with Trinity Broadcasting Network, the world’s largest Christian television network.

“The US government under President Trump has spoken forcefully against the ICC for this travesty, and I urge all your viewers to do the same. To ask for concrete actions, sanctions, against the international court – its officials, its prosecutors, everyone.”

Netanyahu’s calls come months after Washington used a similar tactic to block a separate potential ICC investigation into its troops’ conduct in Afghanistan. It announced in March that it would deny entry to ICC officials, and later revoked a visa held by the ICC chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda.

ICC judges later refused to open the investigation, citing a lack of cooperation from parties involved, including Afghan authorities and the Taliban, but also the US.

It was not clear if Netanyahu intended to also block ICC officials from entering the country, which could hamper its work because Israel controls access to the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The case involving Israel follows years of preliminary investigations. Bensouda said in December that she would seek to open a formal inquiry into alleged continuing war crimes in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

It would look at alleged crimes carried out by both Israelis and Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas, which has been accused of “intentionally directing attacks against civilians”, according to Bensouda’s office.

She intends to investigate incidents during the 2014 Gaza war between Israel and Hamas. The case could also be expanded to include the alleged killings by Israeli soldiers of more than 200 Palestinians, including more than 40 children, at demonstrations along the Gaza frontier during the past two years.

Separately, Bensouda argued there was a “reasonable basis” to believe that Israeli authorities had committed war crimes by moving Israeli civilians into the West Bank to live in settlements. Under the Geneva convention, signed after the second world war, the transfer of civilians into occupied land is prohibited.

In his interview, Netanyahu, who intends to declare large parts of the Palestinian territories as Israeli land, said the ICC was impinging on “Israel’s right, the Jewish people’s right, to live in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel”.

While Israel rejects the court’s jurisdiction and has not signed up to the international treaty, the ICC’s mandate is to prosecute people, not countries, including those from states that are not signatories.


The Israeli government has also argued that as Palestine is not a state, it should not be allowed to petition the court. Palestine used its UN observer state status, gained in 2012, to join the ICC. Before opening the formal investigation, Bensouda has requested that ICC judges “confirm” the court’s jurisdiction over the occupied Palestinian territories.