US sends world mixed messages

THE Jekyll and Hyde nature of America’s dangerous balancing act on the world stage was plain to see yesterday as US troops targeted members of the media covering the war in Baghdad while in Belfast President George W Bush was giving out a strong message of support for lasting peace in Northern Ireland.

No doubt both sides in the war on Iraq will deny it, but it is clear from yesterday’s attack on a hotel used by the media that journalists are now being targeted.

So far, In what is now being described as a ‘war of liberation, and not of conquest’, hundreds of civilians have been killed. So too have a dozen reporters and media staff while two others are missing and many more have been injured in the three-week-old conflict.

In light of yesterday’s apparent change in the rules of engagement which left three journalists dead after US forces shelled the Baghdad hotel and the Al-Jazeera TV office in the Iraqi capital, the call by the International Federation of Journalists for an independent inquiry into potential war crimes is entirely warranted.

It represents 500,000 journalists in more than 100 countries and ideally such a probe should be conducted by the UN or the International Criminal Court.

This suggestion is unlikely to be adopted, however, because America treats the UN with naked contempt and refuses to recognise the jurisdiction of the ICC.

Nevertheless, after coming under intense pressure from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush has promised the UN would have a “vital role” to play in post-war Iraq.

Having effectively sidelined the international peacekeeping body by going to war without the approval of the Security Council, he is refusing to spell out in any detail what role it would have in the aftermath.

Their marked reluctance to define how the UN would be involved reflects the determination of the hawkish regime currently controlling US foreign policy. Undeniably, the vast majority of people in and outside Iraq will applaud the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s monstrous dictatorship.

But the realisation that such awesome firepower is now in the hands of warmongers hell-bent on promoting America’s image as global policeman is a stark reminder of the fragility of the geopolitical map.

Despite its many flaws, the UN remains the only agency capable of commanding respect and credence on a global basis.

As he aspires for recognition in the history books for his role in helping to break the North’s logjam, Mr Bush runs the risk of going down in history remembered as the US president who was responsible for undermining the integrity and primacy of the UN as peacemaker.

The contradictions inherent in America’s myopic view of the world were underlined in a positive sense as Mr Bush urged leaders of the main pro-Good Friday Agreement parties to put the peace process back on track so devolved government can be restored at Stormont.

With the British and Irish governments expected to lay the solid foundations of lasting peace tomorrow, the nation is praying the IRA will finally break with paramilitarism in all its past forms, taking the gun out of Irish politics completely and irrevocably.