(article is
from the news section of the Jamestown Post Journal)
10/2/2004 - By JOHN WHITTAKER
A former Nuremberg prosecutor is calling on a greater role for the United
Nations to make aggressive war obsolete in favor of a legal solution to international
disputes.
Whitney R. Harris made his remarks Friday at the Robert H. Jackson Center
during the first of several events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the
death of Robert H. Jackson.
Harris worked with Jackson during the prosecution of Nazi war criminals at
Nuremberg.
Harris' speech on Friday, however, focused on the future of international
justice rather than his role at Nuremberg.
While Nuremberg was the first international criminal trial following an aggressive
war, Harris said the law is the key to preventing all wars in the future.
Copies of Harris' latest book, The Tragedy Of War, was also distributed following
his speech Friday. The Jackson Center published the 125-page manuscript.
Aggressive warfare, Harris said, has been a problem since the time of the
ancient Greeks that has never been properly solved. Terrorists add a new wrinkle
to the problem because terrorists operate outside the law.
While a head of a foreign government - Saddam Hussein, for example - can be
tried in an international court, terrorists cannot.
War involves nations while terrorists defy nations, Harris said. Neither terrorists
nor pirates are recognized in the International Court of Justice established
in 2002.
To ensure peace in the future, Harris said terrorists and tyrants must be
eradicated, democracy must prevail throughout the world and the rule of law
must displace the rule of force.
Decisions to remove tyrants and dictators should never be made unilaterally,
he said. Instead, resolving such disputes through a legal process is the only
sensible alternative to war.
That body is the United Nations Security Council, though Harris said the International
Court of Justice should be given power by the Security Council to make sure
that the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia can't escape the
court's decisions.
No single nation is capable of establishing a world peace.
All nations must take part, Harris said, by expelling terrorists and tyrants
from the international community. They should not be allowed to be United
Nations members, he said, while trade and economic sanctions should be used
more.
''How can it be that more than 2,500 years after this tragedy, man, who fancies
himself to be intelligent, has still not found a solution to this tragedy
- war and the aftermath of war?'' Harris asked.