US officer refuses to fight in Iraq citing war crimes

WASHINGTON - A US Army officer has refused to fight in Iraq, saying it would make him "party to war crimes".

First Lieutenant Ehren Watada's supporters - including clergy and a military family group - said he was the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse to serve in Iraq and risked being court-martialled.

The Pentagon said Watada was among a number of officers and enlisted personnel who have applied for conscientious objector status.

In Britain, New Zealand-raised RAF doctor Malcolm Kendall-Smith was jailed in April for refusing to serve in Iraq. He was sentenced to eight months' imprisonment for five charges of failing to obey a lawful order.

During the three-day trial at Aldershot, in southern England, the flight lieutenant said he believed the conflict in Iraq was "on par with a Nazi war crime".

The 37-year-old holder of dual British and New Zealand citizenship has lodged an appeal against his conviction.

Watada said in a taped statement played at a Tacoma news conference that his participation would "make me a party to war crimes".

"The wholesale slaughter and mistreatment of the Iraqi people is not only a terrible moral injustice but a contradiction of the Army's own law of land warfare. My participation would make me party to war crimes," he said.

His superiors at the nearby Fort Lewis military base would not let Watada leave the base to attend the press conference. Another news conference took place in Watada's native Hawaii.

Watada, 28, had been scheduled to be deployed to Iraq for his first tour later this month. He joined the Army in 2003, and has served in Korea.

Watada said his moral and legal obligations were to the US Constitution "not those who would issue unlawful orders."

Nearly 2500 US soldiers and an estimated 40,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

In recent weeks, Marines have been accused of killing 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha, raising concerns about abuse of force.

- REUTERS