Question:
Austria took the Presidency of the EU. Since there is a common policy of the EU, is there also an idea of a common European strategy concerning the ICC matter?
Answer:
First of all, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak on this issues. The second, as to the EU, we took the Presidency yesterday, and certainly what we do is to continue the policy of the EU in this regard. The EU certainly relies on some sort of consensus among the members and the Presidency can only represent what is operated and agreed among the members. As far as there are still certain diversions in the different use of the members it is very difficult to present it as a community opinion to others States. So first at all it is necessary to see how far there is a common position taken by the different partners of the EU, and attempts have been made. We are certainly aware of the common statement of the EU and the statements made on behalf of the EU in the sixth Committee and the PrepCommittee as well as at the beginning of the Conference, so this is certainly the starting point from which the position of the EU can proceed. Certainly it will become more important towards the end of the Conference. We are now approaching the penultimate week of this Conference and certain decisions have to be taken. We will see in the next meeting of the EU how far the Union could go in this regard and certainly it is a general wish of the EU to contribute to the positive result of this Conference and this transpires from the statements of the EU, and all members of the EU have very much interest in a positive result as soon as possible in the establishment and creation of an effective creation of an ICC in order to stop impunity and also to prevent hopefully the most heinous crimes and so far as all members of the EU are influenced and rely, are based on this particular objective and try to pursue this objective very seriously and this would be already very useful basis for the further activities of the EU in this regard .
Question:
Time is really running out and as you said we are finishing already the third week of negotiations, There are still a lot of open questions, a lot of informals are going on. Talking about jurisdiction, talking about the "core crimes", there is still an open debate about the crimes of aggression. Could you tell us more about that since there is the opinion that it is going to be backed out?
Answer:
The last point I could not fully share. Since we have to take a decision on jurisdiction, and we have to take jurisdiction on board, as to aggression we are certainly aware of the different opinions concerning aggression and there is on one side the opinion that aggression must in any case become a part of the jurisdiction of the Court. On the other hand there is also the opinion that aggression should not serve as a stumbling block for the creation of the Court and we should not forget and we must have forgotten that the lack of the definition of aggression once already prevented the establishment of a Criminal Court and we have to look back to the history in order to find the right assessment of the situation. Austria is interested in having aggression in the jurisdiction but certainly the main concern is the creation of an effective ICC. As to the jurisdiction we have different views and they have been made quiet clear in the various informals. We have two main divergences: the one is that we have an jurisdiction only according to an addition declaration by the States, the other that you have some sort of automatic jurisdiction – within this field we have again different views on the precondition of the exercise of jurisdiction and it is very clear that jurisdiction will be one of the most decisive points to be decided upon and in my view the one of the points to be decided only towards the very end of the Conference because of it’s a hard political issue and certainly the decisive issue deciding on this cope and the effectivity and the effectiveness of the ICC. So these are some of the main issues. We are now in the situation where we have to distinguish two kind of problems: the one are the political problems, they only depend on the political will. The political will can be taken in one hour, that’s not the problem. The other problems are the technical problems. We have to cover quite a lot of technical problems, we have to solve quite a lot of technical problems and they mostly belong to issues which are of a very technical nature like surrender and trial and prosecution and all this, quite lot of work has to be done and people dealing with it are working very hard in order to solve all this problems so that at the end we could have at the same time both issues solved – the political as well as the technical but it is a difficult issue and certainly we have to work very hard, one on the political and the other more on the technical side.
Question:
What do you think about pressure on the public opinion?
Answer:
Well, we are now in the situation where the so called civic society is exercising a certain influence on the negotiations among the States. But we had already meetings with representatives, in particular with NGOs on this issue. Of course we share the view that we need a Court which has practically a wide jurisdiction, on the other hand we have to be also realistic because the problem would be that our asking for a wide jurisdiction could be one step too far and could only destroy everything. We have also to keep in mind we have only this chance, we have not a second chance and we have to use it and so certainly I’m sure at the last minute we have to do certain concessions, we have to find quite precisely where is our bottom line. What is still acceptable to us we will try as far as possible that we can have an effective, efficient Court but on the other hand we have also to pay tribute to a certain sort of realism in the international relations and we cannot deny that..
Question:
Just the last question concerning penalties and the issue about the death penalty and long imprisonment. Can you tell us about that?
Answer:
Well , this is mostly covered from other people of my delegation. As to the death penalty the Austrian position is quite clear that we cannot expect death penalties because in the view of the development of human rights certainly it is impossible to accept this but I’m not fully aware of the present situation of the negotiations on this. I now only that negotiations are still going on, that there was an appeal to include death penalty among the penalties but this is still a matter that also has to be discussed in curse of this and the next week.