Leaders Urge Indictment of Iranian President

Ben Harris
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

NEW YORK

Barely 48 hours after the conclusion of a government-run Holocaust-denial conference in Tehran, Jewish leaders in New York spoke of an initiative to bring Iran's president to trial for inciting genocide.

An all-star lineup of prominent politicians, lawyers and other leaders laid out a case against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, referring to his objective of "wiping Israel off the map," his consistent denial of the Holocaust, and his country's pursuit of nuclear- and ballistic-missile capacity.

Speakers announcing an initiative to bring Iran's president to trial include (from left) Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents, outgoing U.N. envoy John Bolton and U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel.

Ahmadinejad's incitement violates the 1948 U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, according to speakers.

The Dec. 14 event at the New York County Lawyers' Association was organized by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

Leaders also sought to lay the groundwork for a military strike if diplomacy and legal action cannot derail Iran's quest for nuclear weapons.

"We will try the law. We will try politics. We will try everything," said prominent attorney Alan Dershowitz, who is also a professor at Harvard Law School. "But if they fail, we will use self-defense."

In addition to seeking an indictment of Ahmadinejad in the International Criminal Court, Dershowitz disclosed that he and Irwin Cotler, a Canadian legislator and prominent human-rights lawyer, were preparing a brief to justify military pre-emption if legal efforts don't work.

"We waited once -- we will not wait again," said Dershowitz, who, like other speakers, evoked the global silence as the Nazis prepared the Holocaust. "Do not expect passive acceptance of genocide. We will fight back."

'Don't Be Naive'
Several speakers expressed reservations about placing too much faith in the United Nations.

"When you're thinking about remedies, don't be naive about the United Nations," said Ruth Wedgwood, a noted international lawyer and professor at Johns Hopkins University.

She further cautioned that U.N. initiatives have a history of being turned around and used as diplomatic weapons against the State of Israel.

Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic, scoffed at the idea that the United Nations could stop Iran.

Peretz accused U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan of being a handmaiden to the events in Darfur, Sudan, where government-sponsored Arab militias have killed hundreds of thousands, as well as a bystander as genocides unfolded in Rwanda and Bosnia.

The resort to legal recourse against Iran was initiated by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, whose president, former Israeli U.N. ambassador Dore Gold, claimed that Ahmadinejad was in "clear-cut violation of the anti-incitement clauses of the 1948 genocide convention."

Speakers noted two specific cases where international law had been used to prosecute war criminals: with former Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet and with Slobodan Milosevic, former head of Serbia and Yugoslavia.