THE HAGUE, June 26: The Dutch government will not organise any celebrations or ceremonies next Monday to mark the first day of the International Criminal Court (ICC), based in the Hague, a government official said.

At a media briefing on Wednesday to explain the practicalities of the ICC’s establishment, foreign affairs official Edmond Wellenstein, said an “advance team” of eight legal experts would handle the day-to-day tasks until the court’s first permanent employees are appointed.

Wellenstein said the experts “who come from all over the world” would begin work next Monday in the ICC’s temporary premises in The Hague.

They would receive and file possible complaints and claims before sending them on to the prosecutor’s office once a chief prosecutor has been named.

The ICC, created by the July 1998 Rome Treaty, will have jurisdiction over any war crime, crime against humanity, acts of genocide and acts of aggression committed after July 1 2002.

However, the definition for crimes of aggression has not yet been agreed to by those countries which ratified the treaty and until resolved, the ICC will not prosecute these types of crimes.

The court will also have no retrospective jurisdiction.

Wellenstein said claims and possibly evidence of crimes given to the ICC would not be made public in the first months. “It will be up to the president of the court to decide which documents should be made public,” he said.

A total of 68 states, including all members of the European Union, have ratified the treaty.

The United States signed the Rome Statute in the last weeks of former president Bill Clinton’s term of office, but President George W. Bush’s administration has refused to ratify it and since said it is not bound by the statute.

The countries that ratified the treaty will hold their first assembly in September at the United Nations in New York to agree on a budget for the tribunal.

The court’s prosecutors and 18 judges will be appointed at the second assembly in January 2003.

It will be then up to the judges to elect a the ICC’s president and vice-president.—AFP