20100608
Reuters

Delegates at a meeting of countries signed up to the International Criminal Court neared a deal on Monday on allowing the tribunal to prosecute crimes involving countries that invade or attack another.

The compromise at the Kampala review conference of the ICC on crimes of aggression, as they are called, centres on the U.N. Security Council's role in determining whether an act of aggression took place.

A draft paper circulated by Argentina, Brazil and Switzerland gives primary, but not an exclusive, role to the Security Council in determining whether an act of aggression took place, and was largely welcomed by delegates as a viable compromise.

"I think we're cautiously optimistic we're going to have a result," said Jordan's Prince Zeid, who chaired a working group on the crime of aggression.

The draft gives a role to the ICC prosecutor and pre-trial judges in determining whether an investigation should be launched, eliminating earlier options of giving power to the International Court of Justice or the U.N. General Assembly.

But it makes this conditional on seven-eighths of ICC member states ratifying or accepting the agreement, which some delegates said could take five years or more. The ICC currently has 111 members.

Until then, it will be for the U.N. Security Council, whose decisions are bound to be political rather than strictly judicial, to decide whether the ICC should open an investigation -- a so-called "external filter".