Iraq trampled on a basic tenet of international law - the inviolability of foreign diplomats and embassies - when its troops forced their way into French, Canadian and Dutch diplomatic quarters in Kuwait, scholars and former diplomats said Friday.
Frequently in history, the retaliation for violating diplomatic immunity has been military action. Sometimes, it has been war."This is an extremely serious case," said Grant McClanahan, a retired diplomat and author of the 1989 book "Diplomatic Immunity: Principles, Practices and Problems."
"It's a very serious insult to the national dignity of the nations that suffer."
The principle of diplomatic immunity - under which diplomats have freedom of movement and are free from arrest or taxation - is formally enshrined in the Vienna conventions of 1961 and 1963.
Those conventions, to which Iraq is a signatory, specifically say that the residences of diplomats are inviolate and can be entered by local authorities only with permission from the embassy.
Iraq transgressed those provisions when its troops entered the residences of the French and other ambassadors in occupied Kuwait.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had already ignored international law by arbitrarily demanding the closure of diplomatic missions in Kuwait and denying permission for some Western diplomats to leave Iraq.
The conventions say a nation cannot close an embassy of another country unless it first breaks relations and may not expel diplomats unless it declares them "persona non grata." Iraq has done neither.
Saddam has tried to muddy the legal waters by annexing Kuwait and announcing that foreign diplomats there had lost their diplomatic status.
But David J. Scheffer, an international lawyer and senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says Iraq has no legal justification for those declarations.
Diplomatic law may not have precise rules on occupied countries, "but international law itself prohibits intervening, occupying and annexing other countries," Scheffer said.
The concept of diplomatic immunity dates back to biblical times, and became common practice from the mid-15th century, when foreign ambassadors first took up residence in the various Italian city-states.
The protection of diplomats also has a "strong basis in Islamic law," said Nathan Brown, director of the Middle East Studies Program at George Washington University. Mohammed recognized the importance of good relations with non-Moslem states and the Ottoman Empire respected the rights of diplomats even when relations with Europe were at their worst, he said.
Historically, violations have been taken seriously.
Hugo Grotius, known as the father of international law, wrote in his 1625 book "The Law of War and Peace" that "Profane History is full of wars undertaken on account of the ill-treatment of ambassadors. Also in the scriptures there is mention of a war which David waged against the Ammonites on that account."
He enumerates many instances where the Romans, and later the French and Germans, took up arms to redress wrongs done to their diplomatic corps.
In more recent times, the United States has frequently used force to protect its diplomats.
In 1854 troops destroyed a town in Nicaragua to avenge an insult to an American envoy. U.S. forces were dispatched to China in 1866 to punish an assault on an American consul and again during the 1900 Boxer Rebellion when the foreign legation in Beijing was under siege.
American forces were sent to Chile in 1891 to protect Americans who had taken refuge at the embassy during a war there and in 1918 the Marines landed in Vladivostok to protect the American consulate during the Bolshevik-led civil war there.
The worst recent violation of diplomatic immunity was in 1979, when Iranian students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. A botched military rescue attempt in April 1980 led to the deaths of eight American servicemen on the Iranian des-ert.
The United States took liberties with diplomatic immunity when U.S. troops forced their way into the residence of the ambassador of Nicaragua during the U.S. invasion of Panama in December. President Bush acknowledged the mistake, calling it a "screw-up."
Scheffer said France and other countries whose diplomatic rights have been infringed upon are fully justified in expelling Iraqi diplomats in retaliation. But he said that under modern international law it would be difficult to equate insults to diplomats with acts of war.
"How we respond to a threat to our diplomatic premises in Kuwait is not going to be as easy to resolve as it was 100 years ago," he said.