With many issues in the ICC breaking the mold of traditional disputes between North and South, the developing nations of NAM have largely been silent in the early days of the conference. But two issues - the need for transparency in ICC meetings and the nuclear dispute - have energised the group, leading to its first meetings to develop joint stances this week.

With the transparency dispute, the effort paid off Thursday as Committee of the Whole Chair Philippe Kirsch announced that all informal meetings would be posted in advance. That step in turn eased concerns among Southern states that too many meetings on key topics were being conducted informally with little or no prior notice.

The nuclear stance could be more difficult for the North to resolve. Although many European countries in the "like-minded" group of nations favour the inclusion of language that would prohibit the use of nuclear weapons, the views of the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) - which oppose that step - have until now been widely expected to prevail. NAM states, however, are united behind placing nuclear weapons on a list of weapons - including landmines, chemical and biological weapons, and blinding lasers - that are "inherently indiscriminate" and cause unnecessary suffering, one Asian diplomat said.

"It would be hypocrisy for the Western nations to support other kinds of prohibitions (of weapons systems), but not against nuclear arms," he argued. But the problem for some Western states is that the United States - and NATO - has been adamant it will not accept nuclear weapons. Inclusion of nuclear weapons, landmines or blinding laser weapons "is entirely unacceptable to the United States ... This is a non-starter," argued US Ambassador David Scheffer. "This is a negotiating conference, not a lawmaking exercise."

Washington's hard line has convinced some activists that at least for now, there is no chance for the inclusion of nuclear weapons in the ICC Statute. "The United States and NATO will probably have their way," said one activist for the International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear Arms. What is crucial, he contended, is that Washington not use any lack of explicit prohibition in the ICC statute to argue for the legitimacy of nuclear weapons. Currently, the United States favours language that would ban chemical and biological weapons, among others "calculated to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering".

A variation accepted by some NATO members would also not mention nuclear weapons or mines but would provide for the addition of "such other weapons or weapons systems as become the subject of a comprehensive prohibition" at any later time. In recent days, this has seemed a compromise several sides are willing to accept.

Scheffer has left open the possibility that other weapons systems could be subject to prohibition later. On the opposite side, one disarmament supporter pointed to the need for some language to ensure that any list of banned weapons that does not include nuclear arms does not allow nuclear states to claim that the ICC statute has legitimised by omission their use of such weapons.

The NAM drive could change all those calculations. On the one hand, the Southern states want the broad range of weapons - from landmines, prohibited under last year's Ottawa Convention, to nuclear arms and blinding lasers - on the prohibited list.  On the other, they have targeted weapons which are "inherently indiscriminate" - echoing language of a 1996 advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice, which deemed that their use would be "generally illegal".

The issue seems to have rallied not only the non-nuclear NAM states, but also India and Pakistan, which both staged nuclear tests last month. China also seems to be supporting the effort, diplomatic sources said.

"What the NATO states had hoped was that their clout would decide the issue," argued Alyn Ware, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy. "The NAM have shown they're not going to take this lying down, that they're not going to give up on weapons systems."

The dilemma is that, if their effort succeeds, it may ensure that the United States and some NATO countries don't sign the ICC statute, Ware warned. That, he argued, could be worse than having a text which does not for now ban nuclear weapons.

Yet the Southern nations may have other goals in mind besides nuclear arms. One diplomat said the nuclear issue could also be a valuable "bargaining chip" in days ahead. Farhan Haq/IPS