This morning, the Committee of the Whole started consideration of Parts 11 and 12 of the draft statute on Assembly of States Parties and Financing of the Court respectively. The two parts were introduced by Rama Rao of India who is the Coordinator for the negotiations.

Among the main problems in the article on the Assembly of States Parties (article 102) is the question of participation: whether it should be open to those who sign the Statute and also to those who sign the Final Act of the Conference.

On the articles on financing (103 to 107), among the contentious issue is whether the Court should be financed by the States Parties to the statute, by the regular budget of the United Nations or by a combination of the two with funding during the initial phase coming from the UN regular budget. Mr. Rao stressed that the issues covered in those two parts were mainly institutional and did not entail great difficulties but there were political decisions that must be made. During this morning meeting, broad support was expressed for the Court to be financed by the United Nations, subject to the approval of the General Assembly, and on the basis of the scale of assessments used for the Organization's regular budget.

At the outset of the meeting, the Chairman of the Committee, Philippe Kirsch of Canada, appealed to delegations to avoid seeking to reinvent articles and not to hold on to issues until the last minute because many issues in the statute were interlinked. The issue is not whether the Conference will adopt the statute but whether it will adopt the statute in the best possible conditions. Asking delegates to cooperate, he said "I need your help", stressing that the Conference is at this moment in a crucial phase.

The Committee will proceed to examine this afternoon Part 13 of the draft statute on the final clauses.