Patten: US stance on law risks alienating countries

GLOBAL RULES: rule of law needed now more than ever

The US risks alienating the majority of the global community if it fails to pay heed to generally agreed concepts of international law, a senior British figure from the European Union told the Commonwealth Lawyers Association conference in Melbourne.

European commissioner Chris Patten issued a thinly veiled warning to the Bush administration in Washington, saying: 'Internationally, those of us who are strong and rich have to accept a global rulebook just as the weaker nations do.

We have to make that rulebook fair to the weak, not just an instrument in the hands of the strong'.

Mr Patten asked rhetorically: 'Would not the common good be better served if the greatest and most beneficent powers could exercise power unencumbered...

by entanglements of international law? The answer is an emphatic no.

We need the rule of law more than ever we did.'

His comments will also stir debate in Westminster, as Mr Patten strongly supported a leading role for the UN in the rebuilding of Iraq, following the joint US, British and Australian military overthrow of the Saddam regime.

'I earnestly hope that the US, with Europe, with the Commonwealth, with the countries of the whole civilised world, will now turn its attention to restoring the authority of the UN,' he said.

Jonathan Ames