LONDON (Reuters) - Britain blocked an attempt on Thursday to arrest visiting Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni for alleged war crimes, officials said.
Livni, foreign minister during Israel's three-week assault on the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip launched in December 2008, is the first senior Israeli figure to visit Britain since the government changed a war crimes law that had kept her and some other Israeli officials away for fear of arrest.
Her centrist Kadima party said she was in Britain at the invitation of Foreign Secretary William Hague.
A Palestinian civilian, who maintains Livni is responsible for war crimes allegedly committed by Israel during the Gaza offensive, asked Britain's top prosecutor to allow an application be made for an arrest warrant for Livni, according to lawyers representing the unnamed Palestinian.
The Crown Prosecution Service said prosecutors had not taken a decision on the request when the government intervened, informing them that Livni was on a "special mission" to Britain, effectively granting her immunity from prosecution.
As a result, Britain's top prosecutor, Keir Starmer, refused to allow an application to court for an arrest warrant against Livni.
Britain last month introduced a new law limiting citizens' rights to seek the arrest of foreign politicians for alleged war crimes committed anywhere in the world.
Israel had urged Britain to change the law in 2009 after there were reports that Livni would have risked arrest on war crimes charges stemming from the Gaza offensive if she had not cancelled a visit.
Under the old law, private citizens could start criminal prosecutions in such cases by applying to a magistrate for an arrest warrant. The new law requires the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions before a warrant can be issued.
However, lawyers for the Palestinian plaintiff said it was not the change in the law that spared Livni from arrest but the government's issue of a certificate of diplomatic immunity.
"Access to justice has been denied in the name of political expediency," a statement from lawyers for the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and the London law firm Hickman & Rose said.
Livni told the BBC the British legal system should not be "abused by those that are trying in the most cynical way to take leaders and officers and soldiers who are fighting against terror ... and to change their position into war criminals."
In a statement issued after talks with Livni on the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Hague said it was "an appalling situation when political abuse of our legal procedures prevented people like Mrs Livni from travelling legitimately to the UK."
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign organised a protest against Livni's visit, saying the British government "must arrest war criminals, not invite them to London."
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