Gone is the moral authority India commanded in the heydays of the pre-nuclear era, especially over developing countries. Already enfeebled and in search of a new, post-Cold War identity, the countries of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) see no reason to look up to the ostracised nuclear power called India.

India, after all, does not have the funds and technologies most of them need and can get from other states. But under the leadership of the ultra-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party government, which conducted nuclear tests in May, India has been trying to speak more loudly, to those who care to listen. It has guts, some say. But "the guts of a forlorn giant in the making, with an extremely soft belly," countered a delegate.  

New Delhi's attempts to assert itself was evident from its actions Thursday: As delegates from 161 countries squabbled to hammer out a Statute for an International Criminal Court, a senior Indian official cried foul over the shape of the Court.

The Statute would set up a "a European Criminal Court with universal jurisdiction", S. Pal, India's deputy permanent representative at the U.N. in New York, said in an interview. Pal dismissed the Court to be created, saying the tribunal to be located in The Hague, the Netherlands, will identify, put on trial and sentence persons accused of committing a crime "according to European standards". Those found guilty would be jailed in ''cosy cells equipped, among others, with modern TV sets", he added. The Hague also hosts the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunal on Former Yugoslavia.

Pal, who is deputy head of the Indian delegation to the Rome conference, said, he feared the ICC might in effect give a green light for "European neo-colonialism through the backdoor". Earlier reports from New Delhi indicated that the Indian government was unlikely to sign an ICC Statute, not least because of objections to dilution of national sovereignty.

Pal's remarks came on the heels of a press conference by Dilip Lahiri, additional secretary at the external affairs ministry in New Delhi, who went into a defense of his country's position on nuclear weapons and its opposition to many of the proposed Court's features.

Lahiri, who heads the Indian delegation, batted for the inclusion of the use of nuclear weapons in the ICC statute as a war crime, despite the lack of support from many delegations.

Critics have accused New Delhi of hypocrisy in seeking the banning of the use of nuclear weapons, but Indian officials argue the May nuclear tests give it additional authority to seek a prohibition. A provision in the against the use of nuclear weapons, Lahiri said, would constitute an "additional bar" to criminalising the use of such weapons. It would also test the commitment of the other nuclear states to set a clear timetable for eliminating nuclear weapons.

Lahiri said there was no convention yet to ban the use of nuclear weapons "only because those who until recently had a monopoly on these weapons have refused to negotiate one". He did not name any country, but was clearly referring to the U.S., Russia, China, France and Great Britain -- the five countries who are also permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

In the earlier part of the conference, New Delhi's support for the inclusion of the use of nuclear weapons as a war crime in the ICC statute was welcomed by its allies in the non-aligned camp, as well as many countries in Europe and the developing world.

But as the Conference stumbled toward the end, supporters among the European members of the "like-minded" group were calling India an obstacle to an agreement. Some of India's non-aligned allies are displeased by what some called India's "obsession" with the nuclear arms provision when it was not the main issue at the ICC.

Sabelo Sivuyile Maqungo from South Africa's foreign ministry said Thursday that while the African group on the whole favoured the inclusion of the use of nuclear weapons, "we cannot allow the Conference to be wrecked" by that issue.

Maqungo added: "How are we going to tell the people in Burundi that we could not agree to establish an International Criminal Court because India insisted on the inclusion of nuclear weapons?" Other African delegates interviewed by TerraViva also pleaded for what one of them called a ''pragmatic'' approach. After all, they added, the Rome Conference was not about nuclear disarmament but about establishing an International Criminal Court which several countries in Africa looked up to.