Continuing to explain the scenario, Mr. Corell said that Mr. Kirsch as the Chairman of the Committee of the Whole would report to the Plenary, scheduled for Thursday, and the Plenary would adopt the Statute, a treaty that would be binding on the states that adhere to it, and a Final Act. The Final Act could be seen as a protocol over all the important events that had taken place at the Conference such as who were elected, which bodies were set up, when did they meet, which delegations were represented in the negotiations, which non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations were present and so forth. This would be set out in the Final Act which was already available as an L. document.

There were a number of resolutions attached to the Final Act. These were tributes to all those who had contributed to the result of the Conference and basically spoke for themselves. There might be some substantive issues that would be treated in the Final Act, Mr. Corell explained, such as any issues that delegates were not able to solve during the negotiations, maybe they would be addressed in the Final Act.

Mr. Corell explained that one very important distinction or difference between the Final Act and the Statute was that once the Final Act was signed, it would be given to the host country which would take custody of that document. The Statute, however, was subject to its own provisions. It was subject to signature. However, in addition, it required some constitutional action at the national level. It would have to be presented to the national parliament and parliament would agree to the State being bound by the Statute and then the necessary national legislation would be enacted to enable the State to live up to that commitment under the Statute. Therefore the Statute was subject to ratification or accession. There were a number of representatives of States at the Conference who have full powers to sign the Statute. But many States may not sign the Statute this week for constitutional reasons. In those cases the text of the Statute would have to be presented to the government and then there might be a decision at the national level to sign. So, that meant that some of those who have spoken vigorously in favour of the Statute may not, for constitutional reasons be in the position to sign it on Friday. It is very important that journalists do not misunderstand the situation and think that all those who spoke in favour now will sign it now. There could be very good reasons for not signing, of a constitutional nature. However, it should not be seen as a lack of commitment.

On Friday, Mr. Corell said, there will be a signing of the Final Act and, for those that are in a position to do so, a signing of the Statute. Then the Statute will be handed over to the Government of Italy, where it will remain until 17 October this year. On 18 October it will be handed over to the United Nations Secretary-General, to be kept in his custody. He is the depositary of the Statute, Mr. Corell explained. In the Legal Office of the United Nations, which Mr. Corell heads, there are almost 500 multilateral treaties where the Secretary-General is the depositary.

The Statute would be open for signatures until 31 December the year 2000, if the text remains as it is currently in the draft. The instruments of ratification or accession by States will be deposited with the Secretary-General. When a certain number of ratifications has been reached, the Treaty will enter into force. The number of ratifications required has not yet been decided upon.

A ceremony to celebrate the conclusion of the Conference would be held at the Campidoglio on Saturday at the invitation of the host state. On that occasion, the Final Act would be handed over to the Italian Authorities and also possibly if there are States that have not signed, they could sign there.

Is there a difference between the people who are in the General Committee now discussing the various parts of the document and those who serve in the Plenary.

Basically, the delegations are the same but, as you have noticed most of the work has been conducted in the Committee of the Whole which is a much more informal institution. The Plenary is the formal body, the supreme body of the Conference. But the delegations are the same. The rules of procedure are also slightly different between the two bodies.

Which countries are in a position to sign the Statute immediately and not have to wait for a parliament to pass a vote? How many countries do you expect to be able to sign next Friday.

On 1 December 2000, when it is no longer possible to make any modifications to the Statute, will you have to have reached a maximum number of countries or will just a handful of countries be enough? Because we have not actually understood whether you need to have a two thirds of UN members, two thirds who are present at the time of voting. People are a bit confused about this, even here in the Conference.

Also, I would like to know about the points that will be discussed this afternoon. Are they still the same key points of last week and the week before or do we have a little more hope?

Mr. Corell:

First question: how many will sign? I am not in a position to tell because even if delegates have full powers they might not necessarily take the position to sign. For instance, the head of delegation might wish refer the matter back to capital again. So it would be wrong for me to indicate any number here as to signatures of the Statute.

The second question: I do not know whether I understood it completely, but I got the impression it was thought that on 31 December 2000 there can no longer be made changes to the Statute. That is not what I said. The Statute will be closed for signatures on that day. This means that States cannot sign it any longer but this does not mean that States cannot accede and this is what we will see. Long after many treaties have been closed to signatures, many many more States accede to the Treaty. Signature and ratification is a two step procedure but, after some time the signature becomes less relevant and then the States go straight to acceding to the Treaty. This means that they accept it immediately after parliamentary approval. Whether the Statute will be amended in the future, is a completely different question. That can always be done and there will be clauses in the Statute to reflect this procedure. I am certain that, after a certain period of time, there would be the need to make changes. Nobody can draft a completely perfect law from the very beginning. We see this at the national level too. This is what parliaments are doing all the time. They are reviewing legislation and enacting new legislation. It is the same thing at the international level although not perhaps so frequent, but there will be discussion in the future. But right now we are focussing on the very document that is to be adopted this week.

With respect to your last question. Are the questions the same? Yes, in a sense they are the same but the difference is that the scope is narrowing, and certainly on some issues States are closer to one another, on other issues there still remains some distance. But, again, this is what happens in negotiations and not until the very last moment will we see the final position taken by the delegations.

My question is about the adoption procedures at the end of the week. The Chairman has said that he hopes to have it adopted by consensus. At least one state this morning was suggesting that may not be possible and they may insist on a vote. If there is not a document that can be agreed by consensus, what is actually the procedure for holding a vote, what are the rules in terms of qualified majority or whatever for adopting it. Would the text be voted on as a whole, or would it be voted on, clause by clause or article by article or is all of that up for grabs.

These are all very pertinent questions but you would appreciate that I do not want to get into that area now. I do not want as a representative of the Secretary-General to indicate by answering questions here that we will have this scenario. Also you must understand that it is for the Chairman of the Committee of the Whole, if the matter is there, or for the President, if the matter is before the Plenary, to make rulings on the issues that you raised. So I do not want to pre-empt anything that can happen. Of course, the best scenario is if we can have general agreement on the Statute, because of its nature and because of the subject matter that it addresses. I am certain that you are not satisfied with my answer but nevertheless this is how much I think I should say right now.

I should be very surprised if anybody in the room is satisfied with your answer except perhaps yourself, but there must surely be precedents that you can tell us about without prejudicing what happens this week, where other such statutes, other such conventions of the United Nations have been adopted by a vote. It is not clear to me but I have in memory things like the Land Mines Convention and so on. Can you tell us what perhaps has happened in the past without prejudice to what happens this week.

Certainly there are precedents. There are precedents where documents, treaties, statutes have been adopted without a vote. And there are also precedents where they have been adopted perhaps with votes on particular provisions. For example the latest Codification Conference which was held in Vienna in 1986, there were a few provisions that were adopted after a vote. So that, per se, is not a problem. What I can do at this juncture is basically to refer you to the rules of procedure which are in document A/CONF.183/6. as adopted on 15 June. There are provision on this in Articles 19, 32 and 49, if I remember correctly.

You seem to completely rule out the failure of the negotiations. Why are you so sure that the Treaty will be open for signature on Friday? They could also ask for another session or more negotiations, no?

I am convinced that there will be a positive conclusion of this Conference and it is also my duty in my capacity as representative of the Secretary-General to work towards that and to plan everything accordingly. Imagine if everybody had got everything ready and they had concluded this document and I had not made the necessary preparations for this. There is a considerable amount of work to be done in order to prepare for the signing of the Final Act and the signing of the Statute. All the texts have to be gone over in their entirety and produced in all the official languages that the members of the Conference are confident that this is the text that they have agreed upon. Definitely there could be other scenarios but one thing I would say is that I think we have demonstrated that tremendous progress has been achieved during this Conference. Also note the hard work that delegations have engaged in. I do not think I have seen anything like it before. They are working all the time in different settings and sparing no efforts to come to solutions. They are always of course working under instructions from capitals but the spirit and the commitment among the participants, there is no mistake about that here.

I would like to know how long the negotiations will last, until Thursday or Friday, what do you think. When will be the end? Can you give any concrete idea?

I can not give any concrete ideas but I think if you listen to what the Chairman of the Committee of the Whole said, his intention is to report to the Plenary on Thursday. That is an indication in itself. The Conference is to end on the 17th, that is to say midnight on the 17th. There have been conferences where clocks have been stopped, but I am not looking at that scenario because of the complexity, the technical complexity of the document. We have to have it in one orderly piece, as it were.

I have a follow-up to the question with regard to the fact that this will be accomplished by Friday. Does that reflect at all the final communique by the Group of Seven that they endorse the International Criminal Court. Does that give a little bit more weight to the fact that they want it done this year, or now?

Mr. Corell:

I am not sure that I understood the question. Was it that their endorsement should carry weight in these negotiations?

Yes, the Group of Seven basically said that they looked forward to the establishment of an International Criminal Court and so I am asking, as a follow-up to his question, as to why is failure is not an option. Is it because the G-7 has basically given, excuse me since we are in Rome, like a Papal endorsement.

Mr. Corell:

Of course, it is important that an endeavour of this kind is endorsed by as many states as possible. If the G-7 has endorsed it, this definitely carries weight. It is important that as many states as possible come on board and definitely if those that belong to that group come on board, so much the better. But what is more important in a sense is to say that, I think we have passed a watershed. A few years ago, I do not think anyone would have believed that there could be a conference on this topic. Now there is one. And I think that states and state representatives and the people, the world has seen enough of what is going on by way of crimes against humanity in some parts of the world and with the feeling that they cannot do anything about the personal responsibility that must be made clear after such occurrences. So, my conviction is that we have passed the watershed and there will be a Statute, no doubt about it. Of course things can happen this week, which we are not aware of but, at the moment, definitely we will have a Statute. I said in New York, before coming here, that in a few years time states will consider the co-operation in this field just as natural as the co-operation in all the other fields where they have been co-operating for many many years, like in navigation, civil aviation, the postal union, you name it. We are in FAO, the co-operation in areas of food and agriculture, the co-operation in so many other fields. The fact that this issue remains outstanding is a proof of the political and legal difficulties that the question entail. But this does not mean that the question is insoluble. It is soluble and I think that the spirit of co-operation is there at this juncture.

One of the delegations this morning said that this Conference does not have any authority to put a time limit on an act of the Security Council That is a legal issue. Can you give us your legal opinion as the Head of the UN Legal Department as to whether, in fact, this Conference would have a right to restrict in time an act of the Security Council suspending procedures.

Mr. Corell:

This question is very easy for me to answer. When issues surface in the United Nations that involve the competence of the Security Council, I do not ever comment upon them unless I am asked by the Council to do so. This is to protect the integrity of the role of the Legal Counsel of the United Nations. If I made statements to delegations or to journalists concerning an issue which could be referred to the Secretary-General, or myself for a legal opinion, then my role would be very difficult. I am often in New York asked these questions and journalists there have been ready to understand this predicament. So, the Legal Counsel would pronounce himself on legal issues if he is asked by the body, be it the Security Council, the General Assembly or the Secretary-General.

We have had very few meetings with you, so we try to take any occasion we have to ask a question. I would like to know if it would be possible to have a document with the numbers of the General Assembly of the United Nations that did not take part in this meeting.

My second question is the following: you said that governments may refer to parliament and therefore the final act may not be signed by any country if all countries were to act this way. My last question is, waiting for December 31 2000 when all of this process will be concluded, if tomorrow or the day after, genocide were to take place anywhere in the world, would it be possible to set up an ad hoc tribunal or is this sort of limbo waiting for the final decision? What will happen?

If I understood your question correctly, the first question how many states of the United Nations do not participate in this Conference. I do not have the exact number but there are 161 states that are participating here. There are 185 states in the United Nations, but here are participating states that are not members of the United Nations also. So this means that you can not simply make a deduction here. I do not want to venture exactly but you can figure basically that almost the entire General Assembly is represented here. We can give you the figures later. But I can refer to a country like for example Switzerland. Switzerland is participating here in the same capacity as any other state in the Conference but they are not members of the United Nations.

The second question, here I must really stress what I said earlier. I do not know if there was a mistake in the translation? When I spoke about constitutional measures at the national level, I did so only referring to the Statute, not to the Final Act. The Final Act will be signed by almost the whole Conference. This is normal. But the Statute is different. The point I wanted to make is that if there are only a few signatures on the Statute, do not mistake that for a lack of interest in signing the Statute. It is for constitutional reasons that some states may not be in a position to sign on Friday. They might come back within ten days, or a couple of weeks or a month or so. But I think it is important that you who will report from the Conference do not misunderstand the situation and say that well, it was only signed by so many states. We should take stock of this later.

How many provisions, definitions or resolutions, parts, differences in the Treaty, in the Statute still remain? In the copy which I picked up today there are many pending issues that are listed which we do not see the final text to. And, is there not a rush or pressure to conclude a document by the end of the week, which might cause interest, legal interest to suffer in the process. It seems there are as many, if not more unresolved issues at this point than when we first arrived here.

Secondly, concerning the Final Act, you mentioned it may include substantive issues that are not finally resolved in the Statute. What would be the legal status of those issues, if they are folded over into the Final Act or if they are included in the Final Act but are not in the Statute?

How many questions will be pending. It is difficult to say, really and it is also because you have to know if there is substance behind the pending issues or if there is not. If you draft a document which contains, let us say, 116 articles basically because that is what they started out with, there are connecting links between these articles. This is one of the tasks in the legal field here, in drafting statutes or drafting laws at the international level, to make a coherent instrument. If you make a change in Article 5, this could have reflections in Article 111. You could adopt, for example, in the Drafting Committee, a provision in an article above the hundreds, but with the proviso that it is pending the outcome of the negotiation on Article 5. Well, when you have that, then you have the pattern and for a legal technician this is a relatively easy step to take, and to make the final comparison. Also we have computers to assist us these days. It was more difficult when for example I started out, doing these kind of things at the national level. But this is where you discover the skill of the drafters also. The instrument must stand the test of time, of scrutiny.

Lastly, the Final Act. I refer to that because I heard this morning that there was a discussion of aggression. Some states want it in, others do not want it in and yet others have said that maybe this is something that we could address in the Final Act. But this does not mean that they would include substantive issues. This means that they would indicate how they will deal with this matter if it is not solved during the Conference. So it is not a substantive provision, it is more a technical and procedure provision that I would expect in that context.