It starts with one thing

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Defying Washington, Germany and France will sit out Thursday's vote on a resolution keeping U.S. peacekeepers out of the reach of the new International Criminal Court for another year, diplomats said.



Word of the decision by Paris and Berlin to abstain in the Security Council vote, expected later in the day, came as the council launched a day-long debate on the U.S.-drafted resolution which has come under fire from human rights groups.


France and Germany, who together have been the driving force behind European unity, earlier irritated the United States by battling its ultimately unsuccessful drive to win advance Security Council approval for the invasion of Iraq (news - web sites).


U.S. officials had said Washington would be closely watching France and Germany on the court vote, warning that a failure to support the U.S. initiative would be a step backward in council efforts to heal bitter divisions created by the Iraq debate.


"We're looking forward, not backward," U.S. spokesman Richard Grenell told reporters on Wednesday. "We're interested in a transatlantic union, not a transatlantic divide."


EU members Britain and Spain were expected to vote in favor of the U.S. resolution, as well as EU candidate Bulgaria, diplomats said.


The first permanent global criminal tribunal, the International Criminal Court, was set up in The Hague (news - web sites) to try perpetrators for the world's worst atrocities -- genocide, mass war crimes and systematic human rights abuses.