Pace: World Federalist was recognized leader of NGO coalition
‘‘We Won!” That was the jubilant headline of an article featuring the comments of NGO Coalition chieftain William Pace in the final ICC issue of Terra Viva on July 18th. “Never before have non-governmental organizations participated in such a dynamic and thorough fashion in the treaty-making process and, for this reason alone, the conference is a landmark,” Pace crowed to the ICC delegates. “We hope that our comments, interventions, and expertise have been appreciated. We know that they have been effective because your Statute, or should I say our Statute, bears so many markers of NGO influence.” Claiming leadership over “hundreds of non-governmental organizations representing civil society from all corners of the world,” Pace pledged to keep his militant cadres actively working for state ratification. “As it has done in Rome,” Pace vowed, “civil society will hold States to account and insist that the Statute come into force promptly.”
The revolutionary role of the NGOs at the Rome summit is one of the biggest untold stories of that event. Ever since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, NGOs have been exercising more and more influence at UN conferences. But the Rome experience marked a watershed in the incredible evolution of NGO power. At the ICC Conference, the NGOs were given unprecedented access and privileges and accorded a status almost on a par with official state delegations. NGO experts and officials, inflamed with their own self-importance, regularly addressed the ICC Plenary Session as though they were official heads of state. They remonstrated, cajoled, and chastised the assembled plenipotentiaries to adopt NGO positions, which always argued for larger jurisdiction and more power for the Court. NGO briefing papers, reports, resolutions, press releases, and legal opinions flooded the conference. The NGO Coalition for an International Criminal Court (CICC) was given a large suite of offices within the FAO conference building itself so that the NGO activists — who outnumbered the official delegates — could overwhelm the conferees with good cop-bad cop lobbying tactics.
William Pace, Richard Dicker, and other NGO spokesmen incessantly reminded the world press and the assembled dignitaries that they were vested with the moral authority of “over 800 NGOs worldwide representing all sectors of global society.” It was, of course, a gigantic confidence game; the NGO “diversity” amounted to a choice of your favorite flavor of socialism. Take your pick: Marxist, Leninist, Stalinist, Maoist, Trotskyite, Castroite, Gramsciite.
Certainly among the most influential of the NGOs was the Rome-based Transnational Radical Party (TRP), an openly Marxist organization that boasts Mayor of Rome Francesco Rutelli, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, and European Commissioner Emma Bonino among its members, all of whom played prominent roles at the ICC confab. Together with its sister organization, No Peace Without Justice, the TRP and other NGOs organized daily demonstrations and panel discussions, in addition to ICC-related broadcasts on its radio program, Radio Radicale. As the host country and the nation with the largest delegation — 58 delegates, as compared to the next largest, the U.S., with 40 — Italy was in the driver’s seat. The Prodi government and Mayor Rutelli gave every advantage to the NGO radicals, granting permission for streets to be blocked for marches and demonstrations and even allowing NGO militants to set up a continuous propaganda stage partially blocking the entrance to the FAO/ICC conference site. On July 14th (Bastille Day, of course) Mayor Rutelli granted the TRP and its CICC allies an especially rare privilege: a torchlight march through the Via Sacra (Sacred Way), a path through the temple ruins that reportedly has only been opened twice this century.
The Transnational Radical Party headquarters in Rome was the center for many NGO activities that spilled out of the FAO complex. That was where Judge Richard Goldstone, former prosecutor for the UN war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, came to present a report promoting the ICC. Not surprisingly, it was produced by a task force Goldstone headed and which was sponsored by the left-wing Twentieth Century Fund. Accompanying Judge Goldstone was Morton Halperin, the notorious Marxist activist whom President Clinton attempted to place in a sensitive Defense Department post, but who now serves as vice president of the Twentieth Century Fund.
Halperin and Goldstone joined one-worlders Ben Ferencz, John Roper (Royal Institute for International Affairs), and Marino Busdachin (Secretary-General of No Peace Without Justice) at the TRP offices to help make the pitch for global governance. Halperin, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a longtime activist in the KGB-linked Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), scorned U.S. concerns about ICC prosecution of U.S. military personnel and advised that ICC participants push ahead for a treaty without the U.S. “The answer for the ICC might be to write off chances of US support for now, and wait for Washington to join later,” Halperin told the Radical assemblage. “After all, it took 30 years for the U.S. to ratify the Genocide Convention,” he said, arguing that it was preferable to wait and have a stronger treaty in that case.
And since the subject of the IPS has been broached, it should probably be mentioned that another of the leading NGO activists at Rome was Fabiola Letellier of Chile, who carries on the Marxist agenda of her “martyred” brother, Orlando Letellier. Orlando, it may be recalled, was a comrade with Halperin in the IPS network, where he served as an agent of Castro’s secret police, the DGI — until he was killed by a car bomb in Washington, DC.
Amnesty International (AI), one of the largest and best-funded NGOs at the conference, was given a special temporary headquarters only one block from the FAO, along the famous Via Circo Massimo. There, at the monument of Giuseppe Mazzini, the Amnesty folks were allowed to block off the piazza and erect a giant tent, to serve as a staging area for their agitprop activities. As is all too common at events such as this, the global corporatists were only too willing to lend support; Sony Corporation and Volkswagen proudly proclaimed their sponsorship of the ICC effort in ads on the Amnesty International tent. On Saturday, July 4th, AI staged an “All Fall Down” event, in which several thousand demonstrators laid down on the Fori Imperiali, blocking traffic from the Colosseum to the monument of Vittorrio Emanuele II.
Among the many other groups comprising the storied “diversity” of the NGO claque were: Parliamentarians for Global Action; European Law Students Association; Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice; Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action; American Bar Association; International Federation of Lawyers; International Women’s Rights Action Watch; Beyond Borders; the Carter Center; Lutheran World Federation; Maryknoll Society Justice and Peace Office; Center for Reproductive Law and Policy; National Association of Democratic Lawyers; OXFAM UK; Earth Action International; Pax Christi International; Sisterhood Is Global Institute; Global Policy Forum; Gray Panthers; Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation; Washington Office on Latin America; International Association of Democratic Lawyers; International Association of Judges; International Commission of Jurists; Women’s Action Group; International Council of Jewish Women; World Council of Churches; and the World Order Models Project.
Of course, leading the clamorous cabal was the World Federalist Movement, whose representative, William R. Pace (CFR), ran the NGO show. The World Federalists, who have long advocated world government, clearly have mastered the art of demagoguery and mob control. However, they do not exercise their leadership by virtue of strategic vision, tactical genius, or moral suasion. They have been accorded the piper status by those who pay for the tunes. It costs a great deal of money to assemble a horde of activists, fly them around the globe, set them up with accommodations and entertainment in one of the most expensive cities in the world, and equip them with all the resources they need to effectively push a coordinated, prearranged agenda. Even more than at previous summits, the NGO “citizen lobbyist” campaign at Rome was completely the creation of the same old tax-exempt foundations — Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, MacArthur, etc. — and the UN agencies and intergovernmental entities like the European Commission. And providing the strategic leadership, as usual, were the Pratt House one-worlders of the Council on Foreign Relations.
