Europe Unlikely To Mediate Russia-Ukraine Peace Talks By Recognizing ICC Warrant - Expert

Europe Unlikely to Mediate Russia-Ukraine Peace Talks by Recognizing ICC Warrant - Expert

Europe is damaging its diplomatic potential and diminishing its role in possible future peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine by recognizing the arrest warrant, issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, for Russian President Vladimir Putin, former German lawmaker and journalist, Armin-Paul Hampel, told Sputnik on Monday

BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th March, 2023) Europe is damaging its diplomatic potential and diminishing its role in possible future peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine by recognizing the arrest warrant, issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, for Russian President Vladimir Putin, former German lawmaker and journalist, Armin-Paul Hampel, told Sputnik on Monday.

Last week, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin, alleging potential war crimes related to Russia's special military operation in Ukraine. Specifically, the ICC alleges that Russia unlawfully deported children from areas of the active conflict.

"The 'selective' justice of the ICC is worthless and insignificant. But what is much worse for Europeans, is that by accepting this political judgment by the ICC, Europe is destabilizing its own diplomatic potential and losing any future role in peace negotiations between the belligerents (Russia and Ukraine). For negotiations, it is essential to keep a "diplomatic playground," Hampel said.

The expert also remembered that Europe had been a great platform for various political talks in the past. Now, the German journalists is convinced, if negotiations between the sides take place, they will be held under the auspices of China or Turkey, and Paris or Berlin will never host such an event anymore. And this fact will be very detrimental to the European political role in the world, Hфmpel said.

"(Former US Secretary of State Henry) Kissinger and the North Vietnamese put an end to the Vietnam War in Paris. That is why it is also a very bad idea to integrate Finland and Sweden into NATO. A few decades ago, we could have asked PM Olof Palme to host peace negotiations in Stockholm, one of the neutral and respected capitals of the world, the same for Helsinki. Now there is only Switzerland left in Europe, capable of launching a peace initiative and being an honest broker. Europe is organizing its own demise," he said.

Besides, the former German lawmaker argued that the ICC had become an instrument of the European countries aimed at spreading their influence around the world, while it was Europe, and not Russia, that faces rejection by neutral countries of the globe.

"The few other examples of such decisions taken by this court in The Hague, which is not recognized by the most important countries in the world: the United States, China or Russia, next to many other smaller countries, show that this court is politically manipulated by Western Europe to try to impose their vision to the rest of the world. Europe considers that Russia is 'isolated': the EU member states actually don't realize that it is the opposite; it is the West which gets more and more isolated and rejected by non-aligned countries, former colonies and the most populated countries of the world, starting with China and India," the expert said.

In addition, Hampel remembered several episodes that, in his opinion, perfectly demonstrate Western hypocrisy. Thus, the United Kingdom avoided having to enter the selective justice of the ICC in the Augusto Pinochet case. The former Chilean leader was arrested in the UK in 1998 at the request of a Spanish judge, Pinochet, in turn, claimed immunity as a former head of state, but the claim was rejected by the British courts. Ultimately, the expert said, then-UK Home Secretary Jack Straw hypocritically allowed Pinochet to return home on grounds of ill health.

"In 2001, after the bloody wars in ex-Yugoslavia, where NATO bombed Serbia, killing many civilians, ex-President of Serbia (Slobodan) Milosevic was transferred to The Hague by the Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic, who ignored a court ruling in his own country banning the extradition. He justified himself saying that if he hadn't, the US and the EU would have strangled Serbia economically by cutting loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank," Hampel said.

The last example mentioned by the expert is the case of Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir. He was also indicted by the ICC in 2015, but continued to travel internationally, flouting the ICC arrest warrant for his role in the Darfur civil war. Hampel stressed that South Africa, for example, had refused to recognize the ICC's decision in that case. Pretoria argued that it saw "no duty under international law and the Rome statute to arrest a serving head of state of an ICC non-state-party." Pretoria repeated its legal argument about Putin last Sunday.

"The politically-motivated decision of the ICC would of course be applied by the EU member-states, but I don't expect president Putin to visit Poland, Germany or France in the immediate future. By the way, Ukraine is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court in The Hague ... I am also waiting for the ICC to issue a warrant for American (US) President George W. Bush about the torture in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the false pretense of arms of mass destruction, supposedly detained by Saddam Hussein, to justify their invasion of Iraq," Hampel said.

The German journalist reiterated his regrets that with such a decision, the EU is slowly destroying its international reputation. The ICC, he noted, could not find anything else than this "propaganda accusation" by Kiev, pretending that Russia "kidnaps" children. Recalling ancient history, when early Christians in Rome were accused of eating children at baptism, Hampel said that the present ICC verdict was of the same level. The expert concluded that children's well-being, actually, concerned nobody.

Armin-Paul Hampel is a member of the right-wing populist party Alternative fur Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) and a freelance journalist, who was a member of the German parliament Bundestag from 2017-2021, where he was an official foreign affairs expert of his party.