October 23, 1997

Statement by the Representative of Germany, Mr. Rolf Welberts

Mr. Chairman,

Germany fully shares the views expressed by the distinguished representative of the Netherlands on behalf of the European Union and wishes to add some complementary remarks.

My delegation feels encouraged by the work achieved during the last meetings of the Preparatory Committee and by the very constructive discussion on this not uncontroversial item in this Committee. We thank the PrepCom's Chairman, Mr. Adriaan Bos, for his untiring and fruitful efforts in negotiating the difficult road towards an international criminal court. We are also deeply grateful to Mrs. Silvia Ferndndez de Gurmendi for her excellent work as working group chair. More strongly than ever, my delegation feels that the PrepCom is close to target. The question is not any more whether the international community will get a court, but what kind of court it will be. Germany's main concern is that it be effective.

In our opinion, recently expressed by Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel, himself a jurist and a former minister of justice, in a major juridical journal, the text of which will be made available in this room, an effective international criminal court will have to rest on four building-blocks:

- The principle of complementarity or subsidiarity: The court will only be able to act when national courts are unable or unwilling to prosecute;

- Limitation of its jurisdiction to (only) four universally punishable core crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression;

- The power of the court's prosecutor to initiate investigations ex officio; and

- Protection of the court's independence against political influence, be it by states or by the United Nations Security Council, with full respect however for the Council's responsibilities under the United Nations Charter. [...]

All roads lead to Rome, Mr. Chairman, and certainly ours does. Germany is deeply grateful to the Italian Government for its gracious offer to host the states conference that is to establish an international criminal court and for the preliminary determinations in view of its Organisation. We look forward to a conference with the participation by the largest number of states, a conference of no less than five weeks with the aim to adopt the necessary convention, which would best be simple, clear and lean, containing basic elements of procedure and fundamental principles of law. As to the conference's rules of procedure, my delegation is satisfied with the proposal that the United Nations Secretariat be requested to prepare a draft to be considered by the Preparatory Committee and adopted by the conference itself We also look forward to a meaningful participation by non-governmental organisations, who have played an important role in furthering the debate. In fact, the Preparatory Committee has developed i

nto a prime example of fruitful co-operation between NGO's and state representatives. Last not least, we count on the experience and expertise of members and staff of the Ad-hoc Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda to provide practical input into the convention.

Mr. Chairman, the wide support for the idea of a permanent international criminal court at the close of this century is an obvious answer to the frightful atrocities that our century has seen. One infamous dictator once bragged about his barbarian ways. By setting up a permanent court, the international community will next year have the chance to make it abundantly clear to anybody toying with similar ambitions that their like will never again be tolerated and that their deeds will not go unpunished. With the establishment of the court, we will be able to say with the poet: "Blame the barbarism of wars, A juster epoch has begun."

Thank you, Sir.