The Arab delegations, however, are equally insistent that they are pushing for a strong and independent Court - and some analysts believe that they are in fact working in good faith to achieve that very end.

The problem, one source involved in the negotiations here argued, is that a combination of linguistic misunderstandings and lack of long-term involvement in the ICC process by some Arab states has led to those governments "unintentionally creating a serious problem".

The signs of the problem abound. Some non-governmental groups worry that the pace of ICC talks is slackening at least in part because several Arab states are voicing numerous objections and amendments, on matters large and small, from issues like state consent to the question of whether enforced pregnancy is a crime.

Many objections and proposals have caused delegates to "lose sight of the very objective" of creating a strong Court, and replaced that aim with "defensive, more political, considerations", warned Waleed Sadi, head of the Jordanian delegation, at the meeting's outset.

Some analysts doubt that Arab states as a whole intend to obstruct the Court, but rather that they intend to support it as a counterweight to other international organs, notably the UN Security Council.

"There is no bad faith in terms of obstructing the process," one said. "But some delegations who only speak in Arabic miss a lot of the debate. They miss a lot of points and, many times, their intervention is a reflection of not understanding the point ... They don't see the totality of the ICC statute."

In other respects, the Arab states simply have a different set of demands they expect of the Court, one diplomat from a Gulf state said. Among them is a view of an ICC which can successfully assert its independence from the 15-nation Security Council, with which some Arab states have felt increasingly frustrated, particularly over the ongoing embargoes against Libya and Iraq.

"The Security Council is a political body, not a legal body," one Arab diplomat argued. As a result, he said, the independence of the Court and its prosecutor from the control of any nation must be established.

"It is a requirement that the member states should, in their endeavours to reassure the effectiveness of the Court, refrain from interfering in the activities of the Court," added Sudanese Justice Minister Ali Mohammed Yassin in a recent speech. "It is equally important to protect the Court from the interference of international political organs."

Those positions, ironically enough for critics who complain of Arab obstructionism, place many of the North African and Middle Eastern states at the forefront of supporting an ICC largely free of Security Council oversight and a prosecutor empowered to conduct independent investigations. 

In that respect, the states are quite similar to the "like-minded" coalition of predominantly European, Latin American and African states that have pushed hardest for a tough Court. (Only Jordan, however, has actually joined that bloc among the Arab states.) Yet the Arab states have also taken other positions that are quite different. As one diplomat noted, "We are serious about the death penalty - that is one area where we will not back down."

Since many Arab countries - as well as other states involved in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) - maintain capital punishment, their delegations in Rome expect the ICC to do no less, regardless of opposition from the nations which have abolished the death penalty.

Similarly, in what one activist called an "unholy alliance" between the Vatican and conservative Islamist states, many Gulf Arab nations have blocked language about protecting the victims of enforced pregnancy.

That bloc of countries, which also includes a few conservative Catholic states, is wary that such language could serve as the basis in domestic laws for allowing abortions in the case of rape - an interpretation the non-governmental Women's Caucus disputes.

Other issues sometimes are divided on religious lines. Egypt, one of the most veteran Arab delegations involved in the ICC debate, recently objected to language suggesting that intoxication could ever be an excuse for committing war crimes.

Other delegations had earlier pushed for the Court's officers and judges to embrace not just geographic, but also cultural and religious, diversity.  That effort, one envoy said, was designed to prevent a repetition of the exclusion of Cherif Bassiouni, an Egyptian legal expert who now chairs the ICC drafting committee, from serving as prosecutor for the former Yugoslavia's UN war crimes tribunal. Some Muslim governments suspected that exclusion stemmed from Bassiouni's Muslim roots.

In other respects, Arab diplomats are clearly eager to push for a strong Court, with many citing cases - such as Kosovo, Bosnia or the Palestinian territories - that could be dealt with in such a venue. But many of them also resist the possibility that their own legal systems could have to cede jurisdiction to the ICC, with the Arab bloc strongly pushing for state consent to be required for any Court investigation.

For all that, source said, many Arab countries could be counted on to support the ICC and to sign on to it fairly soon. "They are very keen on participating, because they feel it is a Court they can support," the source added. Farhan Haq/IPS