This is, perhaps, normal.

Kirsch's second paper, one discouraged delegate said, "totally ignored the (virtual) vote of Wednesday" and settled for the "lesser of evils" method in posting the options open to the conference. But, she conceded, Kirsch, chairman of the Committee of the Whole, remains "the main hope to arrive at a good Treaty".

The NGO Coalition for an ICC issued Friday a Special Report with the debate's numbers. It said 76 percent of governments gathered in Rome supported the threshold for war crimes; 75 percent the inclusion of internal armed conflicts; 73 percent spoke in favour of automatic jurisdiction for the Court. On states required for prosecution, 79 percent supported the Korean proposal; 76 percent backed propio motu powers for the Prosecutor, and 46 percent supported the proposal (Option 2), limiting to 12 months the power of the Security Council to stop an investigation by the Court.

The new paper leaves out - or more precisely, for now puts off for "further discussion" - "crimes of sexual violence," and those of terrorism and economic embargoes. Treaty Crimes (terrorism, drug trafficking and crimes against United Nations personnel) may be included by the end of Monday, Jul 13, "if generally accepted provisions are developed by interested delegations."  There is no universal jurisdiction over all three core crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, but just on genocide.

On children, it settles for "conscripting or enlisting children under the age of fifteen years," instead of the 18 years promoted by Unicef and the Children's Caucus.

Regarding the role of the United Nations Security Council, the new paper adds to the Singapore proposal, a revised option which does not limit in time the Council's powers to stop investigations. On the Prosecutor's powers, it offers the option of having a pre-trial chamber to decide on investigations launched by the Court, or "additional safeguards" (again leaving out the ex-officio prosecutor demanded by the like-minded countries.

The outcome Contradictory messages in the halls of the Conference give indications that the possible outcome of the negotiations may well be a Court Statute weakened but still acceptable to both the 60-odd like-minded group and the United States - but not necessarily with the US signing on at the outset. (A fading possibility anyway).

Other delegates, in light of the latest developments, have begun to speak of simply not signing a weakened document that may gather full US support and European "flexibility", but may backfire at home.

In any case, one emerging issue under discussion between delegates and their ministries back home is whether it makes any sense at all to bring a minister to the signing ceremony at the Campidoglio square on Saturday - which may prove to be a little embarassing. Nonetheless, Theo van Boven, the Netherlands' deputy head delegate, praised the US delegation - probably with a tinge of irony - for its "enormous input…trying to make a contribution on every article and paragraph" of the Statute under negotiation. This, he said, shows Washington's "commitment" to the ICC.

This approach has been described by delegates, midway through the Conference,  as a strategy to arrive at the present situation, in which time is becoming the main factor in defining delegations' positions and attitudes. But there is a positive side to everything: "If the US would not associate itself at this moment with a progressive Court, it may join in later," van Boven said.

"Governments come and go, but the US people remains there." Emma Bonino, the European Commissioner and head of the European Commission delegation, was not as understanding. Alarmed, she said: "I found the American paper, which must have been carefully studied and duly approved, extremely disappointing."

"In practice, the American 'package' means that the United States wants the Court to act only when instructed by the (United Nations) Security Council," she pointed out.

Bonino also assailed the US' stand on state consent, which she called equivalent to having had (Cambodia's former ruler) Pol Pot consent to his and his Khmer Rouge's own arrest and trial. Thus, she said, it is important to make "Washington and Paris" know that people care about the ICC, and called for massive attendance to her Transnational Radical Party's torch march scheduled for July 14 at the Via Sacra in the Imperial Forum, next to the Colosseum.

The Non-Aligned

This weekend, most of the non-aligned countries were insisting to the very end on resisting the dropping of the crime of aggression from the Statute. They want to push for a definition of aggression and - if all that fails - to pursue a compromise on the addition of aggression as a generic crime pending the definition of its elements by a preparatory committee or a review conference at later stage.

The non-aligned bloc noted that a vast majority - 92 countries according to CICC- voted for the inclusion of aggression in the Statute. In theory, the 113 non-aligned countries could impose a Court of their choice since they have more than two-thirds of the participating countries. But, as India's Dilip Lahiri pointed out, there are divergences even among the non-aligned, so that they would first have to "persuade each other before persuading the rest."

Jordan informally introduced Saturday a draft definition of aggression, based on the original German proposal, which describes the crime as one carried out by an individual or individuals in a position of power strong enough to promote "the use of armed force on behalf of a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of a State or States".

Alireza Dahim of Iran, told TerraViva that aggression was worth fighting for because it is "the mother of all crimes." Most non-aligned countries are however prepared to settle for a Statute in which the crime of agression is at least mentioned. But others now want the grouping of developing countries to insist also on the issues identified as treaty crimes - terrorism, drug-trafficking, mercenarism - partially mentioned in the first discussion paper and deleted in the second one, after Wednesday's debate.

Over the weekend, most were wondering whether the US really meant to paralyse the ICC debates or whether its stand is just a tactical move to show its Congress and Senator Jesse Helms in particular, that Washington is out there to protect vital American interests and is about not to yield its sovereignty.

After meeting US delegates, American Bar Association (ABA) president Jerome Shestack conceded that "the US position is an evolving one" and that in negotiations, "sometimes you play the hard cop in order to become the soft cop later on."

"I wouldn't take too seriously something that says (now) 'this is our position'…Any sophisticated negotiator will know that in the last three days of a conference people work out compromises and alternatives. At the end, position soften," he said. Alejandro Kirk