The New York Times

Sunday, December 14, 1997

Legal Experts Agree on an Outline for a Global Criminal Court

By BARBARA CROSSETTE

Legal experts from around the world have ended two weeks of intensive negotiations at the United Nations with a rough outline for the first permanent international criminal court. The court is likely; to be established by treaty at a conference in Rome next summer.

Although disagreements remain on some issues, most nations expect the new court to fill a longstanding legal gap by taking on cases of genocide, war crimes -and other crimes against humanity. Currently, only ad hoc tribunals for the Balkans and Rwanda have those international prosecutorial powers.

Among remaining disagreements after the talks ended on Friday are those over whether attacks on civilians, mass starvation or the use of nuclear weapons and land mines will be considered war crimes. Major industrial nations and the nuclear powers object to an exhaustive list. Human-rights groups say the scope of the new court should encompass the broadest existing humanitarian conventions and not reflect what they see as the narrower interests of big powers.

But for the first time, there is almost complete agreement that crimes of aggression aimed specifically at women will be listed separately. Legal experts say this is a result of a strong international campaign by women's organizations and human-rights groups prompted by the use of rape and other sexual abuses -as acts of war in recent conflicts in the Balkans and Central Africa.

Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright has been among the most outspoken leaders on this issue. Her envoy for war-crimes issues, David C. Scheffer, has been meeting over the last year with women's groups to draft provisions on those abuses in the treaty text.

There has also been less concern than expected about the problems of meshing international legal systems. Justice Louise Arbour, the Canadian judge who is chief prosecutor of the two existing war-crimes, tribunals, said in an interview that there is now enough accumulated experience to demonstrate that when international crimes are clearly recognized as universally repugnant, legal systems do not get in the way of prosecution.

Among the most difficult outstanding issues is the role of the United Nations Security Council. The United States and the other four permanent Council members - Britain, China, France and Russia - initially wanted the Council to have the sole power to refer cases to the court.

Britain, now under a Labor Government that is gradually rewriting the country's foreign policy, broke ranks with the rest during the talks. The British now back a proposal by Singapore that would give the Security Council the right to postpone a case temporarily if the situation out of which it arises - a civil war, for example - is being dealt with as a security issue by the Council. This would require an active decision supported by all five permanent members with veto powers.

Under the formula preferred by the United States, the Council could block a case simply by not referring it to the international prosecutor. Justice Arbour said the court would be politicized and weakened if the prosecutor was denied all independent powers to initiate cases.

"What the British did was very important, extremely important," said Jelena Pejic, coordinator of the Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights' work on the international criminal court. "It has loosened the Security Council's ranks."