Breakthroughs On War Crimes.(Brief Article)

The record is not perfect. There is no question that we have learned many lessons about the need to react far more quickly. --David Scheffer

The past eight years have been marked by a new wave of genocidal terror and human-rights abuses in places like Rwanda, Bosnia and Sierra Leone. As the first president elected in the post-cold-war era, Bill Clinton came under immediate pressure to lead the international community in halting the atrocities. A new approach to peacekeeping and human-rights abuses has emerged. David Scheffer has been on the diplomatic front lines when many of the decisions were made--first as a senior adviser and counsel to the then U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright, then as President Clinton's ambassador at large for war-crimes issues. Last week Scheffer saw some of his efforts pay off. After months of arm- twisting, and trips to Phnom Penh by Scheffer, the Cambodian National Assembly passed a law that paves the way for a tribunal to prosecute former leaders of the bloody 1975-1979 Pol Pot regime. Also last week President Clinton signed a controversial treaty that would establish an international criminal court (ICC) for war crimes. NEWSWEEK's Adam Piore spoke with Scheffer by phone. Excerpts:

PIORE: How has the approach to preventing and responding to war crimes changed over the last eight years?

SCHEFFER: The responses are much more focused, much more achievable. The record is not perfect. There is no question that we have learned many lessons about the need to react far more quickly, and sometimes far more unconventionally, than has previously been the case when confronting more traditional conflicts. We've learned that when you have a conflict associated with atrocities, it's absolutely essential to build response mechanisms as quickly as possible. Those response mechanisms had either not matured or were not quickly triggered in the Rwanda and Srebrenica cases.

You have said that the international community "pays a far higher price coping with the aftermath of genocide than if it were prepared to defeat genocide in its earliest stages." Could you expand on that?

The cost of dealing with a genocide is not only a financial cost. There's the cost that a genocide brings in terms of the economic collapse of the society, the social and housing structures--everything begins to collapse in the aftermath. It can take decades to rebuild an economic infrastructure and an enormous amount of international assistance. Putting a military force on the ground as a breaker to the threat of genocidal forces can actually be a far cheaper proposition.

What do you see as the largest challenges lying ahead for the next ...