LONDON, December 16 (RIA Novosti) -Britain will revise its arrest warrant issuance system to avoid a repetition of a scandal involving former Israeli foreign minister and now opposition leader Tzipi Livni, the U.K. foreign secretary said.
A London court earlier issued an arrest warrant for Livni on a request from Palestinian lawyers who accused her of having committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip, which is run by the radical Islamist movement Hamas.
The court annulled the warrant when Livni canceled her planned visit to London, but Israel has slammed the court over the incident and called on the U.K. authorities to take measures to rectify the situation.
The British government is "looking urgently at ways in which the U.K. system might be changed in order to avoid this sort of situation arising again," Foreign Secretary David Miliband said.
"Israeli leaders, like leaders from other countries, must be able to visit and have a proper dialogue with the British government," he said.
"The procedure by which arrest warrants can be sought and issued without any prior knowledge or advice by a prosecutor is an unusual feature of the system in England and Wales," Miliband said.
