The US is putting pressure on aspirant NATO states to support American exemption from the International Criminal Court, Chris Stephen reports from Sofia
The United States and the European Union have plunged Eastern Europe into a tug-of-war over whether Americans should be immune from war crimes prosecutions.
Washington is conducting a systematic campaign to force nations here who want to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation - practically all of them - to sign bilateral agreements exempting Americans from prosecutions. Those who hold out fear the US will block their NATO membership applications.
And next month the European Union is expected to retaliate, telling these same states that if they sign such deals, they can forget about EU membership.
At stake is the future of the International Criminal Court, which opened for business in July. The US is not a member, but is worried that US troops now operating in nine member nations could face prosecutions.
Romania has now caved in to US pressure, signing the so-called Article 98, with its president Ion Iliescu saying the move was "an opportunity and a necessity for Romania." It follows Washington's victory earlier this year in persuading the UN to grant its troops in Bosnia a one-year immunity from prosecution.
The only other nation to sign a deal with America is Israel, but Bulgaria and Hungary are considering following suit, and other countries, from Latvia to Albania, are under pressure to do likewise.
Bulgaria is typical: A small impoverished nation struggling to attract Western capital, it sees membership of NATO and the European Union as twin badges of acceptability in the Western World.
Its government, led by the former King, Simeon Saxe-Coburg, is perplexed. With all its other problems, having to choose between Western Europe or the US is a dilemma it could do without.
Many in Sofia think they should side with the Americans: NATO membership talks are due to begin in November, whereas the European Union has told Bulgaria that it is not in the first wave of prospective member applicants.
Not everyone is bowing to US pressure: Yugoslavia, still smarting from American bombing in 1999, has refused to consider such a move, as has Croatia.
Like Yugoslavia, the Croats are angry at what they see as double standards: Both nations have had to surrender suspects to the United Nations war crimes court in The Hague, most notably former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.
But Washington is in no mood to compromise: America's War Crimes Ambassador, Pierre Richard-Prosper, said in interviews last week that unless he gets co-operation from all nations where US troops are now stationed, he will demand a blanket immunity from all UN and NATO nations, a move that could yet split that alliance.
And the issue is hammering a deep wedge between America and Europe, with US Congress already passing a law that gives the president the power to order US troops used to free any Americans held in an ICC jail.
America's stance on war crimes is all the more unusual because Washington was the prime-mover behind the war crimes process.
US pressure led to the UN war crimes court being set up in The Hague in 1993, and US cash and expertise got it up and running. And last year, it was the incoming Bush administration that forced Yugoslavia to hand over Milosevic, threatening that otherwise it would block one billion dollars worth of aid.
However, the ICC is a different beast from the existing UN tribunals. The UN courts are temporary, and are restricted to cases in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The ICC, also based in The Hague, is permanent, and has a much wider brief - more than 70 nations are now members.
Many, including Amnesty International, have criticised the Americans as hypocrites - happy to see other nations investigated for war crimes, but determined to have an exemption for its own actions.
America protests that the ICC could be open to "political" indictments, in which corrupt judges agree to launch bogus prosecutions against the United States.
Certainly, the US is vulnerable to charges that it is infringing war crimes laws.
It has so far failed to investigate a series of bombings of civilians in Afghanistan, or to resolve the status of prisoners it is holding at its base on Cuba. But neither case will come before the ICC - because Afghanistan is not a member of the court.