Mr President,

May I add my Delegation's voice to those of others who have offered you their warm congratulations on your election to preside over this important International Conference?

The Minister of State, Mr Tony Lloyd, has already expressed the position of the European Union, and his sentiments are naturally warmly endorsed by the United Kingdom. I would like to add simply a few observations on the nature and importance of the task that faces us at this Conference. A fuller statement of the United Kingdom position is in a note which we have already distributed to Governments and which is also available here today.

Support for the establishment of an effective international criminal court was part of  the Election Manifesto of the New Labour Government. In an article published to mark the opening of the Conference, Robin Cook, the British Foreign Secretary, reminds his readers of how the perpetrators of past atrocities had made the assumption of their impunity. During our century, and especially since the Second World War, legal immunity has been progressively whittled away by a number of important legal instruments. These establish the principle of individual responsibility. As a result, the atrocities which have so horrified our moral and political consciences in recent years were none of them unpunishable, whether under national law or international law. Yet the atrocities happened. So the feeling of impunity must still be there. Some would even claim that it is growing. The ad hoc Tribunals established by the Security Council for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda are a sign of our determination to insist that there will be neither immunity nor impunity. Yet we know that adhoc Tribunals are not enough. They are disparaged by their opponents as "Victors' justice". And they are by definition a remedy which is both ad hoc and post hoc, brought in after the unthinkable has already happened. Only a permanent international criminal court is capable of becoming a permanent deterrent. It would be a huge blow for justice.

To strike this blow is a vital task. But it is also a heavy one. I would therefore like to use this opportunity to focus on two or three issues which are of particular importance to the creation of an effective Court, but which may not yet have received the attention they deserve.

The first is the qualifications of the judges and of the prosecutor; and an electoral system which will ensure that those chosen for these positions have the qualities and qualifications we require. All shades of opinion at this Conference - whether we lay the stress on the authority and independence of the Court or are nervous about its impact on national sovereignty - all rely equally on the rigorous impartiality and judicial skill of those who will be appointed to be the judges and the prosecutor. Without that assurance none of us will really feel that the checks and balances in the Statute can be relied upon in practice. And, just as important, the Court will not be able to command the authority that corresponds
to its high position.

We must not forget that the Court will not simply be a court of appeal. It will be a Court of first instance, before which the individual is tried and the evidence offered by the Prosecutor is tested. In our own national systems, we expect citizens accused of crimes to be tried, sentenced and imprisoned by persons who are trained to weigh up the evidence, and have a thorough grounding in criminal law and procedure. Can we really put those accused of the most serious crimes against humanity to trial in an international court by persons who have never conducted criminal trials in their professional lives? Yet that could be the effect of some of the proposals in the draft Statute. Our firm view is that both the trial and the pre-trial functions of the Court must be carried out by those best qualified to do it properly, that is primarily by those with experience of criminal law and evidence, and of how to handle trials. This is not to disparage international law - I would scarcely do that having made my living from' it! - but it simply recognises that trial is a highly skilled professional function, and that the skill is acquired by practising in the criminal courts.

But, Mr President, to state what the qualifications must be is one thing; to ensure that the Court is composed of those possessing these qualifications requires us also to pay particular attention to the electoral system, and even to the process by which nominations are put forward. Our Delegation looks forward to discussing these issues in a serious way with other interested delegations. A system which allows the election of judges to become politicised will not meet the expectations on us; the same is true of a system which is not sufficiently proof against even the allegation of political partiality. Mr President, much of what i have said about the appointment of judges applies equally to the appointment of the prosecutor . May I move now to another issue of great importance: the obligations on States to cooperate with the Court. This is not simply a question of the surrender of indicted defendants or of the proper operation of the complementarity mechanisms. At least as important is cooperation over the provision of evidence for prosecutions before the Court -including of course evidence which may be needed by the defendant himself

Our national experience with the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia is instructive. I believe it is widely known that the United Kingdom has been able to supply intelligence information to the Hague Tribunal; more than 100 British servicemen have been interviewed by the Tribunal and some have given evidence in Court or may soon do so. Our Ministry of Defence gives extensive practical assistance to the Tribunal on a regular basis. This is the sort of cooperation we would like to see replicated on a permanent basis for a permanent Court.

Mr President, may I say to you and to the Conference that we have thought about these matters hard and anxiously. We have our own national security concerns and these must be protected. But I would like to assure you that we are satisfied, on the basis of our actual experience, that the proposals which the United Kingdom has on the table are workable. Not only are they workable but, we believe, they capture the right balance between the requirements of national security and the essential needs of an effective system of international justice. I can only commend them to the Conference.

Mr President, that constructive and practical attitude will characterise my Delegation's approach to the entire Conference. The negotiating challenge ahead of us is formidable. We are firmly committed to achieving our goal here in Rome. To do so we will all have to set ourselves sensible limits. We need to focus our negotiations on what is necessary and look for reasonable compromises where national positions differ. Thus, my Delegation does not intend to use this Conference to try to rewrite international humanitarian law. The essential rules and principles we need are already there. The focus of our attention will be to create a system of jurisdiction to vindicate these rules, and to make it a system of jurisdiction that works. So we are not interested in creating competitive tension between national and international jurisdictions, still less in creating an international Court that would seek to take over the role of national systems. Complementarity is of the essence of an effective International Criminal Court - as the International Law Commission recognised from the outset. In our view we have in Article 15 a very good draft article on complementarity and it would be damaging to reopen it.

Finally, Mr President, let me offer some reassurance to the Conference. We British are, as you would expect, fiercely proud of our common law system. But we are not so insular as to think that it offers all the answers, or indeed the only answers, to the myriad problems inherent in creating a truly international system, one which will be universally accepted and which will stand the test of time. So we do not come here wedded to a single stereotype, but we are wide open to good ideas from any region or any legal tradition. We hope the same will be true of others, whether Governments or NG0s. The sense of justice is firmly rooted in the mind of the individual, and is often culturally conditioned. So is the sense of injustice. Our task is to satisfy the one and leave no room for the other.

It is a formidable task. But if we succeed we will have created a major new international institution. A Court, as the Foreign Secretary wrote, which will empower victims by giving them hope; a Court that ends the awful paradox that those who kill millions are more likely to escape justice than those who kill only one. The time is right for such a body. Public opinion now demands it. We have the responsibility to do our utmost over the next thirty days to bring such a Court into being.