UN extends peacekeeping mission in Bosnia

The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously today to extend its peacekeeping mission in Bosnia until July 15.

The move gives diplomats extra time to thrash out a compromise in the row over the new International Criminal Court which had threatened to bring the police training mission to a sudden end.

America has put a veto on the mission because it fears the 46 US soldiers involved could be at risk of politically-motivated prosecutions before the tribunal, set up in The Hague this week to try cases of genocide, crime against humanity and war crimes.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the British Ambassador to the UN, said after the vote that the council would resume work on America’s concerns about the court next week.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had earlier warned the US secretary of state Colin Powell that the American action put the whole system of UN peacekeeping operations at risk. Annan said he was ‘‘seriously concerned at the development in the Security Council’’.

Efforts by America to break the deadlock by proposing that some nations’ peacekeepers be given immunity from the tribunal for a year, or that permanent members of the council should be given the right to veto any prosecution, were both rejected.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Tuesday that he believed there were sufficient safeguards to protect Americans against politically-motivated prosecution.

But on the same day, US President George Bush said he would never allow American diplomats and soldiers to be tried at the court.