"Some delegations use a tactic typical of bilateral negotiations, (while) in a multilateral framework different sets of values must be taken into account," European Comissioner and Head of the European Commision delegation, Emma Bonino, told TerraViva in an interview.

"We should stop navel-gazing but look up to shared interests and points of contact,'' she warned.

The negotiations look stalled. Is this due to the natural dynamics of the process or due to deliberate stalling tactics?

I share the concerns expressed twice in the last 48 hours by the Chairman of the Committee of the Whole. We must focus on the essentials and not continuously re-open the debate on issues already settled at the Preparatory Committee.

In the third of the Conference's five weeks, time seems insufficient for such an exercise. What will be the outcome?

At this stage, I am hopeful, rather than optimistic. Too many questions are still open to make an accurate assesment of our likelihood of success.

Is a weak Court better than no Court at all?

I don't have a perfectionist agenda, but our aim should not be a Court at all costs. The price we should be willing to pay is the result of a simple calculation: will we be able to look at ourselves in the mirror after July 17th and say: "Have I contributed to the end of impunity?"

Which countries are attempting to block the conference and why?

It seems that some members of the international community are not quite ready to join in a common system of enforcement of international law. Foreign policy may well be the last vanity of nations. However, we must realise that the prosecution of persons responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes is not a question of national interest, but a shared goal of all nations.

Diplomatic sources told TerraViva that - as expected - procedural hurdles are being introduced mainly by the United States and China, but also by Britain and Arab countries. Who did Kirsch allude to in his appeal? "The Arabs," one NGO source said. "The Americans," another NGO official replied.

He probably meant all of them. "This strategy is very effective, because it ensures the objective of making it impossible to accomplish the task within the five weeks of the Conference, and that the result will be a Court so weak and powerless as to present a credible alternative to the ad-hoc tribunals such as those of Yugoslavia and Rwanda," a diplomatic advisor said.

Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, she added, the United States and Britain have already informally declared their willingness to create new ad-hoc tribunals for emergency situations in the future, because they do not seem to believe that the ICC will have sufficient authority. 

The group of nearly 60 'like-minded' countries in favour of the Court seem to have been cornered by this tactic, forced to negotiate ad eternum in the search for a compromise that will not irritate or, better still, will include the United States, only to find out later on that previously reached compromises are then ignored.

Jelena Peric of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights said Monday that some critical areas have been considered vital to the Court's sucesss by advocates. But Peric also warned that concentrating only on the five or six big issues may distract attention from the language of the statute as a whole - which may in turn produce a whittled down ICC. Alejandro Kirk/IPS