This is one of the more sensitive issues the Community leaders will address in a caucus session when dealing with an `external relations’ agenda on matters of importance to CARICOM during their 24th regular annual Summit that gets underway in Montego Bay from Wednesday, July 2.

Arising from the recent meeting of Attorneys General in Port-of-Spain, the CARICOM Secretariat was requested to prepare a brief to help in guiding deliberations at this week's meeting of Community leaders.

For all the diplomatic pressure tactics from Washington, NO government of the 15-member Community has yet acquiesced to the demand for an extradition waiver

And questions have been raised about the accuracy of Washington's claim that some 37 countries have already entered into such bilateral pacts to avoid prosecution of Americans by the ICC. Some 130 member states of the United Nations have signed the treaty for the creation of the ICC.

But the Bush administration stubbornly refuses to recognise the court's jurisdiction, although ex-President Bill Clinton had signed on just prior to leaving the White House. Even Britain, America's war partner against Iraq, has been critical of Washington's attitude towards the ICC.

The US-based international human rights organisation, Human Rights Watch, has accused the Bush administration of "putting itself on the wrong side of history..."

In the reckoning of at least two heads of government, this would be to "collude in undermining the legitimacy of the ICC" to which CARICOM as a whole was committed to continue supporting.

One Attorney General simply poured scorn on a mere US$1 million aid offer being dangled before a few Community governments by Washington's "negotiating" envoys to win support.

Tough Talking
A delegation representing the George Bush administration has gone through the Caribbean region talking tough to some governments about likely cuts in socio-economic and military aid, including military training, unless they facilitate, by Tuesday, July 1, the requested immunity waiver.

This indecent pressure is an extension of what one British newspaper, `The Guardian’, has described as "brute diplomacy" by Washington.

The Bahamas has denied reports of an "agreement in principle" having been reached with the USA, and has made it clear that it would be fully involved in CARICOM's deliberation on the matter.

The Dominican Republic, not a member of CARICOM but involved in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries, may turn out to be the sole country in this region to yield to what Washington wants.

A question of relevance here is whether some CARICOM states may want to concur with America's request for a waiver to create a precedent for them to be exempted, for whatever period, from the emerging Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) in order to continue access to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London.

Of the130 nations that signed the treaty that brought the ICC into force a year ago, at least 89 have since ratified that treaty. Among them would be at least four CARICOM member states.

Since just 60 ratifications are necessary, it means that with 89 known ratifications, the ICC is now well placed to begin its work.

Among the first panel of 18 elected judges of the ICC sits the former Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago, Karl Hudson-Phillips. After endorsing him as the region's representative on the ICC, will CARICOM countries now make a farce of the legitimacy of the ICC by genuflecting to US pressures to secure war crimes immunity?

Trinidad and Tobago, the identified headquarter location for the CCJ, is resolute in its opposition to such a US waiver request.

The European Union, which has approved a one-year limit for the USA to clear up its policy on the jurisdiction of the ICC, has been advising its member states to strongly resist Washington's demands for extradition exemptions from the ICC.