NAIROBI (Reuters) - The United States will attend an International Criminal Court (ICC) meeting this week as an observer for the first time since the Hague court was set up in 2002, President Barack Obama's war crimes envoy said Monday.

Official says US to attend annual war crimes court meeting as observer for first time. The United States will attend an annual meeting of the International Criminal Court, a body it has so far refused to participate in, the U.S. envoy for war crimes said Monday.

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The United States wants Kenya to hand over a Rwanda genocide suspect it believes the east African nation has been harboring for years, President Barack Obama's war crimes envoy said on Monday.

As a first step towards winding up its presence in Sierra Leone, the UN backed Special Court on Sierra Leone on Monday turned over its jail to the government, which will make it a women's prison.

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chile's President Michelle Bachelet on Tuesday condemned as haughty and offensive comments by Peru's leader Alan Garcia over a spy scandal that has stirred century-old tensions between the neighbors.

MAU FOREST, Kenya (Reuters) - Trudging out of the woods in a heavy downpour with a large sack roped to his back and two black chickens cradled in his arms, Eric arap Tuwei joins his wife and six children in a flimsy grass shelter.

A United States ambassador said Thursday that Washington was concerned about how aggression will be defined as an international crime.

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues Stephen Rapp made a debut appearance for the United States at the world's war crimes court Thursday and said the U.S. remained wary of politically driven prosecutions.

The UN war crimes tribunal on Thursday appointed a London lawyer to represent Radovan Karadzic during his genocide trial, a legal adviser to the Bosnian Serb wartime leader said.

On the beach at Monster, bulldozers painstakingly turn sand dredged from the bottom of the North Sea bed into dunes in an ambitious effort to safeguard the Netherlands from flooding.

UN war crimes court appoints British lawyer as standby counsel for Radovan Karadzic. The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal has appointed a British lawyer to represent Radovan Karadzic if the former Bosnian Serb leader continues to boycott his trial when it resumes in March, according to a document released Friday.

On the beach at Monster, bulldozers painstakingly turn sand dredged from the bottom of the North Sea bed into dunes in an ambitious effort to safeguard the Netherlands from flooding.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Peru's President Alan Garcia and his delegation pulled out of an Asia-Pacific summit in Singapore on Sunday in protest over charges neighboring Chile had paid a Peruvian military officer as a spy.

Serbian Patriarch Pavle, advocate of tolerance and peace in the Balkans, dies at age 95. Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarch Pavle, who called for peace and conciliation during the Balkan ethnic wars of the 1990s but failed to openly condemn extreme Serb nationalism, died Sunday. He was 95.

Developing countries will need up to 100 billion dollars (80 billion euros) a year for 40 years to combat the effects of global warming, said a World Bank report released in The Hague on Tuesday.

The judge who led a UN inquiry into Israel's assault on Gaza urged the United Nations Tuesday to refer the Jewish state and the Palestinians to the International Criminal Court if they failed to investigate alleged war crimes.

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court will pursue those "most responsible" for violent crimes allegedly committed after 2007 elections in Kenya, his office said Wednesday.

EU report: Georgian barrage on breakaway region not legally justified, started war with Russia. Georgia and Russia both claimed to find vindication in Wednesday's independent report on the causes of their 2008 war, but neither seemed likely to be able to take the moral high ground because of its blunt judgments.

Israel warned on Thursday that the UN Human Rights Council would strike a fatal blow to the stalled Middle East peace process if it passes its damning Gaza war report on to the Security Council.

Israel warned on Thursday that the UN Human Rights Council would strike a fatal blow to the stalled Middle East peace process if it passes its damning Gaza war report on to the Security Council.