The UN conference on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court took place from June 15 to July 17, 1998 in Rome, Italy and was attended by more than 130 countries. To date the Statute has 139 signatories and 36 ramifications. Seven countries however, have rejected it, including China, Israel and the United States.

According to Campaign for Global Change, it's President Bush's turn to announce his administration's official position on the US human rights policy and the ICC. For some, the issue is one of sovereignty. For others, the issue is one of war criminal prosecution.

To prosecute the perpetrators of war criminals in Bosnia and Rwanda, ad-hoc tribunals were created. For the most part, they have not been successful.

"The [ad hoc] international criminal tribunals, like the Nuremberg tribunal before them, explicitly rejected the concept that state sovereignty could provide impunity from prosecution for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity." Supreme Court of Canada Justice Louise Arbour, who was a prominent advocate for the establishment of a permanent court during her recent tenure as chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, said. "These ad hoc tribunals embodied the ideas of universal jurisdiction and personal criminal responsibility which I believe are powerful antidotes to the cyclical revenge pattern which maims one generation in the name of another."

Despite that, the Senate is considering legislation to bar all American support of the ICC. The American Service members Protection Act, already passed in the House, would prohibit military assistance to countries that join the Court and restricts the US from participating in peacekeeping efforts.

"America is saying that the main concern is protecting its service members from prosecution from a hostile foreign land," said Judge Robinson O. Everett, former Chief Judge and current member of the US Court of Military Appeals to address American servicemembers and the ICC. "The fear is sending troops overseas and they get arrested for war crimes with no due process."

"One of the key goals was to protect out people before we became a part of this Court," said Bruce Broomhill, Director of the International Justice Program. "But we knew from the arrest of (former Yugoslavian President) Slobodan Milosevic that the US would support the indictment of a war criminal."

On one hand, Broomhill said, the US wants the Court but not the risk.

"This contradiction is evidenced throughout the world," said Bill Pace, Convener of the International NGO Coalition for the International Criminal Court. When asked by a reporter, via conference call, if America was being hypocritical by not wanting its servicemembers arrested and wanting to arrest heads of state, Pace said, "The real interest is not service members. The true reason is concern about its high level leaders. They don't want to be told that they can't leave the US because of some court's rule."

That, Pace said, could possibly change opinion about American sovereignty. "The notion of sovereignty is a vague thing," Broomhall said. "But no country has a right to commit genocide on another country. "If an American shoplifts in Paris, he has no sovereign right to do so. He is subject to the laws of the land."

"I'll put it like this," Pace said. "If a man in New Jersey was arrested for mass rape in New York, I'd give up any sovereignty to catch him."

But the ICC, according to Judge Everett, won't actually exercise sovereignty over any country. Instead of giving up their sovereign rights as a nation, countries will be extending earlier treaties as well as their own jurisdiction. It will be a way to prosecute offenders internationally, using universal law.

The seven nations that oppose the ICC might not have enough influence to stop it from forming. According to Pace, only 60 nations have to agree to it before its ratification. The 36 nations that have agreed are far more than anyone expected by this time.

"By 2002 it will be legally binding," Pace said. "That means the court should be ready by 2003.

"We will soon have a gradual replacement of war and anarchy with law. In one or two years, the world we be a safer place."