"I don't see why my country would have to sign a Treaty that does not comply with the minimum requisites for an ineffective instrument; I don't see why we should adhere to something that does not mean anything," she said, commenting the results of the Conference so far.

Not signing seems to be a last resort to some delegations with little influence in the negotiation process. At the same time, a Court without the United States is "doomed to failure, " said Aguiar, who is a lawyer and the Dominican Republic's ambassador to the United Nations in New York.

Small delegations have little chance to know where meetings are taking place, much less follow their discussions, thus creating a discriminatory situation, Aguiar complained. In fact, she said, the "sad" situation is that small nations "must adjust to the notion of justice of the powerful." 

"Our situation is very complex. We have to be rational and take into account the imperatives of our vicinity" with the United States, which accounts for 80 percent of her country's foreign trade.

She said she also finds herself having the double disavantage of being a woman   representing a small country in a conference dominated by males. "It is a scandal that of 11 judges in the ad hoc tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, there are only two women. (Yet) the main victims of the war in the former Yugoslavia and in all wars are women," she said.

However, she defended her country's stand of not supporting the inclusion of the crime of forced pregnancy in the Statute "if it could in any way be interpreted as the legitimisation of abortion in international law."

The Women Caucus's has repeatedly accused the Vatican's delegates of exerting undue and improper pressure on countries of Catholic majorities in order to link the issue of forced pregnancies with that of abortion. Forced pregnancies is one of the issues left for further debate in the Bureau Discussion paper, and one that many delegates consider doomed to be left out of the Court's Statute.