Under this option, the Conference would solemnly adopt Friday a "framework" Statute containing all the issues already agreed upon in the last five weeks - while leaving the most controversial ones for a later stage, under a protocol. This, in other words, would be an elaborate postponement that may not sound like bad music to delegates and non-governmental organisations, in spite of openly expressed fears that the entire negotiating process in Rome risks being reopened somewhere else.

The mandate of this Conference is to produce a Statute by Friday, Jul 17, chairman Philippe Kirsch said, and he claimed that four-fifths of the work is already done. But what's left is what divides this meeting into camps that have two distant concepts of a Court - indeed, two different Courts.

Simultaneously, practically the entire meeting went into a standstill Wednesday, waiting for Kirsch's latest proposal (this time without any options to choose from). This proposal, which was rapidly christened "The Package," is exactly what the United States would not like to see, according to the sources. Kirsch and the like-minded group of countries are expected to push for the package to be approved almost until the very end.

Most delegates seemed relieved when it was announced yesterday that the chairman's draft would not be released, as previously expected, at midnight, and they looked even more relieved when the timetable was moved further to noon, Thursday.

For Italy, a member of the like-minded group, it is a matter of political and diplomatic prestige to have hosted a Conference that must not only be - but also like Caesar's wife - look credible. And for it to look credible, a risky voting process or a simple postponement for another time would not be enough.

A cryptic Umberto Leanza, alternate head of the Italian delegation, told TerraViva that "additional protocols" would allow countries to "improve their aim" - without necessarily having to formally adhere to the Treaty and sign a Final Act in Rome. This is the nature of negotiations involving international law, he said, which "journalists often do not understand". But it is not what the Italian foreign minister, Lamberto Dini, demanded the day before at the Committee of the Whole.

Leanza recalled that the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea took 20 years of negotiations and some 10 years of being "perfected" before entering into force in 1994. But he admitted that, in the ICC's case, "there are other urgencies" to be taken into account, namely, that 10 years would probably mean some more millions of helpless people killed or abused. "I can't deny that this idea is circulating," a diplomat close to Kirsch said of the option of having protocols, because it represents a "pragmatic" way of not pushing the US aside through a vote in which it would just say "no," putting a whole group of countries in an embarrassing situation.

This alternative is something "nobody wants to talk about yet", said the Egyptian delegate Sayed El Masry. But most delegates admit in private that it could be the only viable option apart from the other two, which are a frightening and endless separate vote on issues, or chairman Kirsch's "take it or leave it" package.

Faced with the certain exclusion of its demands from The Package, India formally introduced the crimes of aggression and use of nuclear weapons to be added to the Statute, and a group of Caribbean states introduced drug trafficking.

If accepted, this would mean separate voting. Delegates said such a move would open open endless voting on every single controversial issue at stake, a process that would be equivalent to deleting all the work done so far.

Such a major failure, an NGO official says, is the very objective of some "big countries of the South, who don't want a Court at all." But this possibility is expected to be aborted by adopting a procedural decision Thursday morning, which would prevent the introduction of amendments.

The US, at least, does want a Court. Surely, it would be one controlled by the Security Council, in the words of NGO officials and like-minded diplomats, but still there would be a Court.

A US source said late Wednesday that, as of 10 pm, the US delegation was "cautiously optimistic" about an agreement, but refused to discuss any scenario, on the grounds that amid the current fluid situation, what is said at 10 pm can change before dawn.

While the US adopted a conciliatory tone Wednesday - without giving up any of its demands (see separate story on page 1 ) - signs of a tactical "crack" among the like-minded countries became evident. Among them, there are those who would wish to just corner the US in front of The Package and force a single vote. Others believe that such a move would be a symbolic gesture of little practical use, as a Court that would face a hostile campaign by the US is unthinkable to them.

In case of a vote, in any case, numbers are not to be taken for granted, despite the clear will expressed by most countries in the debate on the most substantial political issues: aggression, jurisdiction, powers of the Prosecutor, state consent, internal conflicts and others, which have been recorded in a timely fashion the NGO Coalition for an ICC.

Widely quoted, and neither denied nor confirmed by the US delegation, are alleged threats by US officials to allied countries championing the cause of a strong and independent Court, which have raised some second thoughts in these capitals, according to Bill Pace, the CICC convenor.

It will be much worse "when our ministers start receiving calls from (US Secretary of State) Madeleine Albright, asking whether we are going to vote against them. What would you answer?" remarked a Latin American diplomat. Others feel differently. "Don't underestimate those who want to push the package," a European diplomat told TerraViva, "because those are part of a group of developed countries who have grown sick of being browbeaten".

Undoubtedly, nobody in this Conference wants browbeat Washington either, or become part of a selected "club" of peaceful and law-abiding countries powerless to push investigations and prosecutions on the crimes this Court is supposed to deal with. Alejandro Kirk