RUMSFELD AND REID

by RAY FLEMING
IN a speech to the Royal United Services Institute in London on Monday, the Defence Secretary John Reid questioned whether the rules of war are out of date and need to be changed to enable countries such as Britain to deal with “an enemy who obeys no rules whatsoever”. This is not new, of course; the need for changes to the Geneva Convention provisions on prisoners of war in the case of treatment of “international terrorists” and in the acceptability of pre-emptive action has frequently been floated by the US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration. These are certainly proper areas for debate given that much international law is at least half a century old, but it is depressing to hear a British minister coming close to adopting the US position that the way to deal with the “anomaly” of Guantanamo Bay is to change international law. The issue of pre-emptive action against an imminent threat is certainly worth further discussion although definition of what constitutes an imminent threat will always be tricky. The most recent example is not encouraging. The United States and Britain took pre-emptive action against a threat from Iraq which did not exist. It is curious that Dr Reid's speech apparently contained no reference to the role of the United Nations. If the UN Inspectors had been allowed to complete their work in Iraq the need for pre-emptive action would not have arisen.