At a press conference Friday, the convenor of the NGO Coalition for an International Criminal Court, Bill Pace, recognised that there was no consensus among the organisations vis a vis the Statute. Still, there are in it "important achievements for which civil society can take credit."

Among those, he mentioned the adoption of a definition of gender - an issue strongly pushed by Chile- sexual violence, victims' rights, an independent Prosecutor, inclusion of internal conflicts, inherent jurisdiction over the three core crimes and limitations to the United Nations Security Council's authority over the Court.

But the secretary general of 'No Peace Without Justice', Marino Busdachin, broke the chain of negative reactions, and gave probably the most optimistic version (even among the like-minded countries) of the treaty heard on Friday.

"This is an acceptable and rational solution, a victory, a clear success," he stressed.

"This court has all the requisites to be effective and must be supported; it is a useful instrument to stop the age of impunity." NGOs, he said, now have the task of struggling for the Court to become a concrete result, in reply to those countries that "came here only to make the Conference fail."

Pace, as well as and Amnesty International secretary general Pierre Sane, agreed that their biggest disappointment lay in the Court's weak exercise of jurisdiction and in the clause that allows countries to opt out of jurisdiction on war crimes for seven years.

However, Sane gave a different interpretation of Article 16, which allows the Security Council to block an investigation. This, he said, goes back to selectivity as to which criminals and which crimes will be investigated and tried by the Court. "After five weeks of lobbying, the baby has arrived, but the baby is crippled and we have to fix it," he said.

Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch said that the opt-out clause on war crimes meant a Court in which "justice is delayed." He said that the immediate future required a global renewed campaign to "close this loophole."

Jelena Peric, representing the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, said "this statute is the result of pressures" and represents "a defeat" for the United States.

It is a reality "Lawyers are not happy with, but have to live with." Palestinian lawyer Mona Rishmawi assailed India, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Arab states, who "played a very negative role by presenting ill-considered amendments." She also said that thanks to the adoption of a limited version of the exercise of jurisdiction, by which only the country of the accused and/or that of the territory in which the crimes was committed need to give consent, then "the rest of the world is a safe haven for perpetrators. That's the message we are sending to the international community."