THE HAGUE, July 1: The world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal officially opened its doors in The Hague on Monday to bring to justice perpetrators of the worst crimes against humanity as the United States stepped up its opposition to the court.

Four members of an advance team reported to work at a temporary office of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the outskirts of The Hague and were ready to receive the first claims, Dutch foreign ministry spokesman Frank de Bruin said.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called the creation of the ICC, supported now by 74 states, “an historic occasion”.

“It holds the promise of a world in which the perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes are prosecuted when individual states are unable or unwilling to bring them to justice,” Annan said in New York on Sunday.

But the United States along with China, Russia, India and Israel oppose the court, arguing that its citizens could be the targets of politically motivated prosecutions.

Human rights campaigners fear that US opposition to the court is weakening the position of the court especially because Washington has demanded its troops be exempt from prosecution. But critics have labelled the US position as a further example of selective or politicised justice.

“It would be the launch of a nuclear bomb against the concept of international justice, it would become totally ineffective,” Jean-Paul Martoz, a Brussels based spokesman for Human Rights Watch, said.—AFP