No wonder. The ICC journey began with the promise of an articulate document, and a debate on it based on the political alignments established in the last 40 days and even before that. But as time passed, the goal of a strong document became elusive, making it necessary for chairman Philippe Kirsch to be locked in difficult, secretive negotiations with delegations.

By Thursday afternoon, anxiety replaced everything else. The various groups met, sometimes more than once, among themselves and then with some others: the non-aligned, the like-minded, the Africans, the Arabs, the Latin American and Caribbean groups, the permanent five members of the Security Council. Omnipresent, here in Rome and out there in the capitals, of course, the United States.

Cracks

As a result, diplomatic sources said, the entire system of allegiances painstakingly built up previously began to crack amid fears of an embarrassing failure (Italy), anger at the US inflexibility (Germany, Denmark), fear of reprisals (Latin America), signs of political isolation (India, Arab countries) and a general, unpleasant sense of having been used and abused (African states).

Suddenly, as if they were fleeing a sinking ship, all delegations seemed to be on their own, looking after their own interests and safety and blaming one another for mistakes and inflexibility. Thus, no group could count any longer on any cohesion in case of a vote on a Statute. Indeed, several versions of the document were circulated in the afternoon, only to be quickly withdrawn on grounds of the need for translations to be finished.

Again, no one wanted to look uninformed despite the tense air and a new wave of speculations and theories began to emerge, while many diplomats began to openly complain that they were being unduly cornered, and being forced to make a decision on a complex document in just a few hours. Nobody seemed to believe anything any longer.

The Package

The much-awaited 'truth' arrived in the early hours of Friday, when only a   persevering few were still hanging around the FAO building. The proposal contains no options and, as expected, it is closer to the like-minded group's vision of a Court than that of the US on key political issues. A whole set of brackets regarding war crimes and internal conflict remains.

Even with the document out, the main options - all of them considered unlikely to succeed without a major crisis - remain open. These are: a vote on the amendments presented; a single vote on the package, the adoption of the package by consensus; or a last-minute trick pulled from the sleeve by master magician Kirsch at the latest possible hour - the so-called additional protocols that would allow countries to either opt out of the Statute or postpone the discussion of political issues to a later stage.