Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Sovereignty watch
In today's news:
Iraq will ask the United Nations to end immunity from local law for U.S. troops, the government said on Monday, as the U.S. military named five soldiers charged in a rape-murder case that has outraged Iraqis.A country does not have any kind of sovereignty, "formal" or otherwise, when it is occupied by soldiers of a foreign power and it has to ask "permission" of the United Nations or the occupying power to be in charge of its own territory.
"If we don't get that, then we'll ask for an effective role in the investigations that are going on. The Iraqi government must have a role." [said Human Rights Minister Wigdan Michael]
The day before handing formal sovereignty back to Iraqis in June 2004, the U.S. occupation authority issued a decree giving its troops immunity from Iraqi law. That remains in force and is confirmed by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1546 on Iraq.
