Friend's views on it. No doubt my right hon. Our serious concerns about the detailed provisions lie not with the concept of a permanent court but with the Bill as it stands. As the Foreign Secretary said, the court will not be established until 60 of the signatories have ratified. There is of course a big difference between signing and ratifying.
Signing is merely an expression of some intention to ratify.
This is an important consideration in the light of the question asked by the hon. States that had not signed the treaty by the end of last year would have been excluded from detailed negotiation of the Rome statute in years to come. That is explicitly why America and Israel signed up at the last minute, on 31 December 2000. We are still a long way short of the number of ratifications needed to set up the court. Australia signed up but has not yet even begun to introduce a Bill to ratify.