European Faults U.S. Official for Remarks on Geneva Rules
By ARIANE BERNARD
Published: September 23, 2006
PARIS, Sept. 22 — The European counterterrorism chief, Gijs de Vries, criticized a Bush administration official who suggested that the Geneva Conventions should not be considered sacrosanct, and that the legal framework for the treatment of terrorists should be amended.
The State Department’s legal adviser, John B. Bellinger III, said in an interview published Thursday in The Financial Times that he questioned whether the Geneva Conventions should be “the immutable legal holy grail as to what the rules ought to be in the 21st century.”
“Mr. Bellinger is suggesting that we should change the rules,” Mr. de Vries, the European Union’s counterterrorism coordinator, said Friday in a telephone interview. “The opinion of Europe’s ministers is that respecting the rules, not bending them, is essential to our credibility and hence to our effectiveness in the fight against terrorism.”...
***
In a telephone interview on Friday, Mr. Bellinger expressed “shock” that his comments had not been well received, and said he was “not suggesting that the old rules should be discarded or that they should not be followed. The U.S. is absolutely committed to our obligations under the Geneva Convention and under existing human rights treaties.”...
***
“The purpose of terrorism is always to provoke governments, and in this case Western governments, into overreacting by undermining the rights we have pledged to uphold,” Mr. de Vries said. That, he said, just creates grievances that encourage further radicalism....
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/world/europe/23europe.html