In attempting to come to grips with the nuclear threat posed by Iran and its firebrand president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, some western nations have tried negotiations while others, notably Israel, have considered a military strike.

Neither option appeals much to Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, left, Canada’s former justice minister and attorney general. The talks have proven unproductive and a military solution is far from ideal, he said.

Instead, he proposes a third way: bring Ahmadinejad to justice by employing international law and charging him – and Iran – with promoting genocide.

Cotler was scheduled to be in Washington this week to present a “Responsibility to Protect” petition to the “Conference on State-Sanctioned Incitement to Genocide: What Can Be Done?” The event is sponsored by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

It was to take place Sept. 23, coinciding with Ahmadinejad’s address to the United Nations General Assembly. Attendance at the conference was by invitation-only, and its 120 participants were scheduled to include members of the U.S. Congress, their staff, the media and diplomats.

Cotler planned to highlight the petition, which has been signed by an impressive roster of anti-genocide activists, including Nobel laureate Eli Wiesel; Salih Mahmoud Osman, a human rights activist on behalf of Darfur and a member of Parliament in Sudan, and Esther Mujawayo, a survivor of the Rwanda genocide.

The petition calls on Canada, the United States, the European Union and the UN Security Council to employ all available legal remedies against Ahmadinejad, including the Genocide Convention, which Iran has signed.

Cotler said Ahmadinejad has made Iran’s genocidal intent clear on numerous occasions bydemonizing the State of Israel and predicting its destruction, as well as by calling Jews satanic enemies of mankind, arming Israel’s genocidal terrorist enemies Hezbollah and Hamas, and developing the capacity to deliver nuclear weapons.

Cotler said the world community has a responsibility to protect potential genocide victims, and international law provides the means to do so. But he noted that in the 60 years since the adoption of the Genocide Convention, nothing was done to prevent genocide in Rwanda and Sudan. Legal action was only undertaken after the fact.

The international community “has the responsibility to prevent this genocide [by Iran] so we don’t go down that road,” Cotler said in a phone interview from Montreal.

Bringing Iran to justice would have several beneficial outcomes, he continued.

“The very process of initiating these remedies will embolden the progressive forces in Iran” and delegitimize Ahmadinejad, Cotler said. It would also embarrass corporations that are doing business in Iran, and regime, he added.

Cotler said the legal remedies that countries such as Canada and the United States could employ include bringing a complaint about Iran to the International Court of Justice under the Genocide Convention, while the UN Security Council could refer Ahmadinejad to the International Criminal Court to stand trial for advocating genocide.

The Security Council could also add sanctions for genocidal intent, in addition to those addressing Iran’s nuclear program.

Countries could place Ahmadinejad on their watch list, making him inadmissible – similar to what was done with former UNsecretary general Kurt Waldheim when he served as Austria’s president, Cotler said.

“[Ahmadinejad] should be treated with the opprobrium of a genocidaire,” Cotler said.

To date, little has been done on the legal front against the Iranian president because “people don’t know what remedies exist. They don’t know international law. They’re not aware.”

Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, former Yugoslavian and Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic did face legal sanctions for their roles in atrocities, but only after the crimes were committed.

“People don’t realize they can intervene to prevent genocide by stopping the incitement,” Cotler said.