Mr. President,

     The general debate of this Conference is now coming to its end. Allow me to say a few words in my capacity as the Representative of the Secretary-General to the Conference. My statement will be limited to some of the provisions of the draft statute for an International Criminal Court which are of direct concern to the United Nations, both as an object of protection and as an entity whose cooperation with the Court in providing information in the fields of its activities may prove instrumental for the proper administration of justice.

     The protected status of the United Nations signs, emblems and military uniforms - first recognized in Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions - has proven, in the practice of peacekeeping operations, to be both justified and necessary.  The Secretariat strongly supports the idea that the Conference now takes a step further in order to criminalize and qualify as a war crime the improper use of the flag, military insignia and uniform of the United Nations by any of the parties to the conflict, when such use results in death or serious personal injury.

     Attacks against United Nations and associated personnel were criminalized under the 1994 Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel, but it was left for the national jurisdiction of each of the State Parties to prosecute or extradite.  In the view of the United Nations Secretariat, these crimes should now be among the crimes falling within the jurisdiction of the Court.  The Secretariat would, however, caution that conditioning the criminalization of attacks against UN personnel on their systematic character and large scale would be inconsistent with the definition of the crime established in the 1994 Convention, and hardly ever appropriate in the circumstances of peacekeeping.

     As an Organization whose peacekeeping, humanitarian and similar field operations are deployed in areas of conflict, the United Nations will almost certainly be in possession of first-hand information which could significantly assist the Court in the determination of the individual criminal responsibility of the accused.  The nature, scope and modalities of its cooperation with the Court in providing oral testimonies or documents will have to be agreed upon between the Organization and the Court. The United Nations, for its part, will be guided by the practice of cooperation with the two ad hoc international tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda that has emerged since they were established.

     Consequently, the United Nations will cooperate with any proper international criminal jurisdiction, whether a Tribunal of the kind established for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda whose orders and requests are binding under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, or a treaty-based Court whose requests must be complied with by the United Nations on the basis of mutually agreed procedures.

     The United Nations Secretariat understands the scope of the cooperation to embrace all stages of the legal process from the investigation to the trial phase, and all organs of the Court, including the Defence, which while not strictly speaking an organ of the Court, is nevertheless an indispensable element of the administration of justice.

     An agreement between the United Nations and the Court as foreseen in the draft Statute will be subject to the approval of the General Assembly.  The following principles will guide the United Nations Secretariat in negotiating such an agreement.

     The principles of the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations should apply also in relation to the Court.  Accordingly, when requested to waive the immunity of any of its officials in order to enable them to appear in court, or when requested to disclose any information which has not yet been made public, the Secretary-General will balance the need to cooperate towards the Court with the protection of the internationally recognized interests of the United Nations.  The Secretary-General will consider the relevancy and specificity of the request for information, the gravity of the charge under consideration, the confidentiality of the documents requested, the risk that their disclosure may entail for the safety of UN staff and the interests of the Organization, and whether in such a case, sufficient guarantees and protective measures can be provided.

     The notion of confidentiality of documents and information in the UN context, needs clarification.  Where a request for disclosure of documents entails an examination of deliberations of closed meetings of the Security Council, United Nations records of meetings with representatives of Member States, including troop-contributing States, a decision to permit such an examination of the activities of the Security Council and individual Member States would raise serious questions equivalent to 'national security' of States. Any provision in the statute for the protection of sensitive national security information should, therefore, be made applicable to the United Nations mutatis mutandis and with the necessary modifications.

     In this context I should also like to draw the attention of the Conference to the communication from the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, which appears in doc. A/CONF.183/INF/4. Ultimately, it is, of course, for Member States to strike the appropriate balance between the competing interests.

    Mr. President,

     Before I close, allow me to make the following observation, also in my capacity of the Representative of the Secretary-General. I have listened carefully to all statements made during this general debate. It is true that there are some issues on which there is not yet agreement. However, this is what could be expected. What is more important is that the clear message from this Conference after the general debate is that there is a true sense of commitment towards fulfilling the mandate of the Conference: to finalize and adopt a convention on the establishment of an international criminal court. The impression from the debate is confidence, determination and a clear sense of responsibility. The Secretariat will do its utmost to support the Conference.
 
     As the Secretary-General said in his opening remarks: We have before us an opportunity to take a monumental step in the name of human rights and the rule of law. We must not fail.