On behalf of the 800 non-governmental organization members of the NGO Coalition for and International Criminal Court, I wish to congratulate the delegations at this conference. This is a great day for peace and the rule of law in international affairs.

We extend our sincere congratulations to the officers of the ICC Treaty Conference, to the coordinators and especially Chairman Kirsch and the Bureau, to the international organization representatives, to the Secretary General and the incredible efforts of the secretariat, including the interpreters and translators.

The establishment of and ICC will represent a monumental advance in the protection and implementation of some of the world's greatest achievement in international law. Tonight you have bequeathed to the next century an indispensable new world institution for justice.

Succeeding generations, which I am sure will wonder why it took the world community so long , and who will surely disapprove of the unacceptable and weakening compromises contained in the Statute, will nevertheless owe an historic debt of gratitude to this world treaty conference. Tonight you have not only displayed great national leadership, but you had demonstrated great world community leadership.

From the final years of this most war-ridden of all centuries, you have given a wonderful gift to the next century. The ICC will deter; the ICC will prevent; the ICC will cause the greatest strengthening ever of national legal systems prosecution of crimes against humanity. The ICC will save millions of humans from suffering unspeakably horrible and inhumane death in the coming decades. This is an incredible achievement. This will be part of the legacy of this night.

The world community at this United Nations conference has taken one of the most important steps toward one of the greatest of all human goals , the goal at the heart of the creation of the UN, to rid the world of the scourge of war.

We have much work before us. The NGOs and governments have forged a partnership in the ICC process which was unprecedented in many ways. With the achievement of the ICC Statute we have demonstrated another example of the extraordinary development of the "new diplomacy" characteristic of the post-Cold War period.

Too much of history is the story of wars won and peace lost. Today peace has won, war has lost.