Britain would not support calls by the Arab world for an international tribunal to judge the Israeli role in recent Middle East violence, Foreign Office minister Peter Hain said Sunday.
"I don't think so, because the circumstances in which war crimes tribunals have been established don't compare ... with the situation in Cambodia, or the genocide in Kosovo or Bosnia and so on," Hain said in an interview with BBC television.
An emergency summit of Arab nations closed this weekend calling for such a tribunal to be set up following incessant clashes between Israelis and Palestinians over the past three weeks.
The fighting has claimed 129 lives, all but eight of them Palestinians or Israeli Arabs. Nearly 4,000 people, mostly Palestinians, have been injured.
"It's understandable ... with passions running very high and feelings inflamed about these awful scenes of violence which we have all observed, that the demand perhaps should have come from the summit," Hain said, adding that any decision on a tribunal was a matter for the UN Security Council.
"Far more important, however, and far more encouraging is that the summit, despite the background of bitterness that exists, has called for a resumption of the peace process," Hain said – LONDON (AFP)
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