ITALIAN FOREIGN MINISTER URGES CONFERENCE NOT TO LET CHANCE TO SET UP INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT SLIP FROM ITS GRASP
Press Release
L/2886
ITALIAN FOREIGN MINISTER URGES CONFERENCE NOT TO LET CHANCE TO SET UP INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT SLIP FROM ITS GRASP
19980714Says Continuing Personal Involvement of UN Secretary-General Is Essential by Virtue of His Authority and His Own Personal Standing
(Reissued as received from an Information Officer.)
ROME, 14 July -- Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini this afternoon urged participants at the United Nations Conference on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court to seek acceptable compromises in successfully concluding their work.
Addressing the Committee of the Whole of the Conference, he said: "I am urging you, on the eve of crucial decisions, that the time to reflect and to mediate is about to run out." He added that the final document to be signed must be a Statute, and not the final act of the work carried out in the past four weeks. "We dare not let this opportunity slip from our grasp. It will be the last chance we shall ever have. The world would never forgive us."
He stressed that in the concluding phase of the Conference, the continuing personal involvement of the Secretary-General was essential, by virtue of his authority and of his own personal standing, and the contribution that he was capable of making to bring the deliberations to a successful conclusion, as recent events had demonstrated.
Following the statement by Foreign Minister Dini, reports of the working groups on Part 9 (International Cooperation and Judicial Assistance) contained in document A/CONF.183/C.1/WGIC/L.11/Add.2 and Corr.1 and Add.3 and Corr.1 and on the Final Act (A/CONF.183/C.1/L.49/Rev.1/Add.1) were introduced. The Committee of the Whole agreed to refer the articles, except article 91, paragraph 4, to the Drafting Committee.
Also this afternoon, Cherif Bassiouni (Egypt), Chairman of the Drafting Committee, introduced his first reports to the Committee of the Whole. He said the Committee was composed of representatives of 25 countries, reflecting geographic representation and various legal systems. Its members also reflected individual expertise. The Committee operated under the rules of procedure of the Conference and had the responsibility to ensure homogenous
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and cohesive drafting. It spent a great deal of time to ensure that there were no conflicts in terminology and, above all, that there was clarity. The Committee was careful to ensure that no changes were made in matters of substance because of the diversity in the way the draft texts were produced by the working groups.
He said the Drafting Committee had been working simultaneously in six languages. In addition to approving texts, it ensured that the language was identical in meaning. So far, Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 9, covering 36 articles of the draft Statute, had been redrafted by the Committee for consideration by the Committee of the Whole. By the end of its session tonight, it would have moved closer to working on 70 articles. He hoped that by Friday, 17 July, the Committee would conclude its task with the approval of texts all delegations could be proud of.
The Committee of the Whole will take action on the first report of the Drafting Committee tomorrow, 15 July, at a time to be announced.
Statement by Foreign Minister of Italy
LAMBERTO DINI, Foreign Minister of Italy, said he had come to bear witness to and recall the importance of the exercise delegates had been involved with over the past few weeks: to define the Statute of an International Criminal Court. Not since the adoption of the Charter in San Francisco had the United Nations set itself such an ambitious, but inescapable goal: "ambitious and unprecedented on account of the moral, more than the political, value of what is at stake, and in terms of such a vast participation of Member States, and the keen involvement of public opinion in all our countries".
Irrespective of any interests or stances of the governments represented, he said, "each one of you is conscious of your own personal responsibility towards history and the whole world. None of you can fail to sense that what is at stake is the legitimacy of the United Nations itself, and its capacity to lay down rules and principles that are consonant with the times and appropriate to the far-reaching changes that have been taking place in recent years. You certainly also feel the responsibility you bear towards the future generations, so that they can enjoy their individual and collective rights and guarantees without having to pass through the tragic trails that have been imposed upon the generations that have preceded them in the present century."
He stressed that in this concluding phase, the continuing involvement of the Secretary-General of the United Nations personally was essential, by virtue of his authority and of his own personal standing, and the contribution that he was capable of making to bring the deliberations to a successful conclusion, as recent events have demonstrated.
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Noting that difficulties had understandably emerged, he said the Conference was endeavouring to consolidate an international community, underpinned by the primacy of the individual, of the person. In some cases, there was a need to supersede the historical boundaries of sovereignty linked to the nation States. The Court would prevent national sovereignty from being used as a convenient shield behind which violence and outrage were committed. It would provide guarantees relating to the procedures, rules and powers, which were especially necessary, relating as they did to the powerful prerogatives of States. The protection of human rights required that an international jurisdiction was superimposed on national jurisdiction, moving away from guarantees within the State to guarantees against the State.
The Court was opening up the way to a more comprehensive legal safeguarding of human rights, he said, adding that their scope and the intensity of the debate on human rights were increasing all the time. So broad was the scope that it now involved every nation in the world, in a spirit of globalization. So intense was the debate that it was at the top of the agenda of international institutions, beginning with the most universal of all of them. The vital balance that had to be struck between national prerogatives and international demands could not, however, be at the expense of the independence, authority and effectiveness of the institution that was about to be brought into being here in Rome.
"This is something that our consciences will not permit to happen", he stressed. The international community could not allow it to pass before the eyes of a world which in the age of global and instantaneous communication, was living in an unprecedented climate of interdependence and mutual knowledge and familiarity. "The wheel of history, after the enforced peace of the cold war, has resumed its course along a path strewn with conflicts, new forms of intolerance, and political, ethnic and cultural rivalry which, even here in the heart of Europe, we believed had been buried once and for all. Conflicts are flaring up in the most perverse forms. Conflicts which ignore even the traditional rules of war, and are revealing the existence of undreamed of reserves of ferocity and brutality. Events that are constantly before the eyes of all, and which appeal to the sensitivity of each of us."
Those emotions and expectations would be expressed in the "Torch-light March" to be held this evening, he noted, adding that it was intended to be an encouragement to bring the Conference's work to fruition, and to assess its scope and impact ranging well beyond the narrow confines of the negotiations.
The debate was now at a crucial phase, with success or failure hanging on a thread, depending for its outcome on the constructive attitude of everyone involved, he said. An irrepressible demand for justice had run through so many conflicts from Nuremberg to the former Yugoslavia. But in all instances the demand had only been partially satisfied, largely imperfectly. Only now was it possible to find a suitable response to the lesson the
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international community had been taught by the century which was drawing to its close.
"I am urging you, on the eve of crucial decisions that the time to reflect and to mediate is about to run out", he declared. As in every other international negotiation, some countries, including Italy, had pursued a highly ambitious project right from the beginning, taking account of the expectations of public opinion, and the challenges of the new century. "But we have also realistically understood the need to take account of the reasons of others, the need to seek out acceptable compromise while not destroying the substance of such an important innovation. This has been the spirit in which we have defined the crimes falling within the scope of the Court, the complementarity between national courts and the international Court, the powers of the Prosecutor to institute proceedings at his own initiative, and the relationship between the Court and the Security Council."
Next Saturday in the Capitol, the Statute of the new Court would be signed, he said. It must be a Statute, and not a Final Act of the work carried out over the past five weeks, he stressed.
Even though the Statute would eventually have to be ratified according to the rules of each country, it must nevertheless be signed by the representatives of all the countries here in Rome, to ensure that it was evidently the contribution of all, he said. Only in that way could the ceremony on 18 July mark a fundamental stride forward in the history of the United Nations, or a new form of international coexistence. "We dare not let this opportunity slip from our grasp. It will be the last chance we shall ever have. The world would never forgive us."
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