The International Criminal Court ("ICC" or "Court") is a permanent international court that currently has jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide (together, "ICC crimes"). Cases may be referred to the Court by States Parties or by the U.N. Security Council, and the ICC prosecutor may on his own initiative request authorization to investigate possible ICC crimes. The ICC was created upon entry into force of the Statute of the International Criminal Court ("Rome Statute" or "Statute"), on July 1, 2002. One hundred and fourteen countries are States Parties to the Statute. The United States, however, is not a party to the Statute. The United States was an initial supporter of the creation of the ICC and played a major role at the international conference that negotiated and finalized the Rome Statute in 1998. President William J. Clinton signed the Rome Statute in 2000 but stated that he would not transmit it to the Senate requesting its advice and consent due to a number of U.S. concerns, primarily the potential for the ICC to assert jurisdiction over U.S. officials and members of the U.S. Armed Forces, even if the United States was not a Party to the Rome Statute. In May 2002, President George W. Bush notified the United Nations that the United States did not intend to become Party to the Rome Statute. The United States also concluded bilateral immunity agreements (BIAs) with approximately 100 countries. These BIAs were intended to fall within the provisions of Article 98 of the Statute, which exempts a state from surrendering individuals to the ICC if such actions would violate the international treaty obligations of that state. Congress passed legislation restricting U.S. cooperation with the ICC. On August 2, 2002, President George W. Bush signed the American Servicemembers' Protection Act of 2002 (ASPA). It generally prohibits U.S. government cooperation with the ICC by restricting the use of appropriated funds to assist the ICC; restricting U.S. participation in certain U.N. peacekeeping operations due to possible ICC prosecution; and authorizing the President to free members of the U.S. Armed Forces and other individuals detained or imprisoned by or on behalf of the ICC. Section 2015 of the act creates an exception from the prohibition on assisting the ICC in order to bring to justice foreign nationals accused of ICC crimes. The U.S. stance toward the Court seemed to soften during President George W. Bush's second term, as the United States began to treat the ICC as a potentially effective tool for international criminal justice. In 2008, for instance, the United States did not prevent adoption by veto of a U.N. Security Council resolution referring a war crimes case to the ICC prosecutor for investigation into atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan. Under the Obama Administration, U.S. officials have been generally supportive of the ICC, while cautioning that the United States maintains its concerns about the threat the Court poses to U.S. officials and members of the Armed Forces, and that U.S. ratification of the Statute is not currently an option. In November 2009, the United States for the first time attended a meeting of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) of the International Criminal Court as an observer. Upon announcement of U.S. participation, Stephen Rapp, U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, stated that "[the U.S.] government has now made the decision that Americans will return to engagement with the ICC." At the November ASP meeting, Ambassador Rapp stated that the United States would also participate in the ICC Review Conference scheduled to take place in 2010. Paragraph 1 of Article 123 of the Rome Statute requires the convening of a review conference: Seven years after the entry into force of this Statute the Secretary-General of the United Nations shall convene a Review Conference to consider any amendments to this Statute. Such review may include, but is not limited to, the list of crimes contained in article 5 [the crime of genocide; crimes against humanity; war crimes; and the crime of aggression]. The Conference shall be open to those participating in the Assembly of States Parties and on the same conditions. Soon after the creation of the ICC, the ASP created a Working Group of the Review Conference to evaluate various issues, amendments, and potential agenda items for the required review conference. Several years of the Working Group's meetings and work provided guidance for the ASP's decision making concerning the Review Conference's agenda and the content of the proposed resolutions and other Review Conference agenda items. On November 21, 2008, the ASP adopted a resolution approving an application from the government of Uganda to hold the Conference in Uganda's capital, Kampala. In two resolutions adopted November 26, 2009, and March 25, 2010, respectively, the ASP resolved to convene the Review Conference and determined the primary elements of the Review Conference's agenda. The agenda for the Review Conference included a number of issues and proposals slated for action by the States Parties, including making amendments to the Rome Statute. The central agenda item was consideration of new provisions to define and activate ICC jurisdiction over the crime of aggression, which involves actions of a state official or leader that cause the use of armed force against another state. The Review Conference would also consider a proposal to remove Article 124 from the Statute, which allowed a new State Party to exempt itself from ICC jurisdiction for the first seven years after becoming party to the Statute. In addition, there was a proposal to include within the definition of war crimes the use of certain poisonous or asphyxiating substances as well as certain types of bullets in non-international conflicts. Finally, the agenda called for the Conference to convene discussions to take stock of the work of the ICC to date and its effects on international justice and other issues. These so-called "stocktaking" exercises included sessions on the obligations of States Parties to cooperate with the ICC and each other to effect international criminal justice; the efforts to improve States Parties' national judicial systems' respective capacity to prosecute individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide under the principle of "complementarity"; the effect of the Rome Statute system on victims of and communities affected by crimes under the ICC's jurisdiction; and the relationship between engaging in peace processes and pursuing international criminal justice. The central issue considered by the Review Conference was the proposed adoption of the crime of aggression into the jurisdiction of the Court. This section reviews the primary issues and points of contention concerning the ICC's proposed aggression jurisdiction. It includes an overview of different states' and other stakeholders' positions on the Court's aggression jurisdiction; a discussion of the proposed and adopted definition of the crime of aggression and the issues surrounding such definition; and a discussion of the provisions that set out the Court's jurisdiction over aggression, including the provisions as proposed, the main issues of contention for the Review Conference, and the jurisdictional provisions as they were ultimately adopted by the Conference. During negotiations to finalize the Rome Statute in 1998, some countries' delegations to the conference wished to include aggression as one of the crimes under the ICC's jurisdiction in order to empower the ICC to end impunity for waging aggressive war in violation of international law generally and the U.N. Charter in particular. The participants could not agree on the definition and jurisdiction provisions of aggression, however, and thus included aggression as a crime included in the Rome Statute but not yet defined or activated. Article 5, paragraph 1 of the Rome Statute, lists the international crimes within the Court's jurisdiction: the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. Paragraph 2 of Article 5 states that the Court will exercise jurisdiction over aggression after it has adopted a provision defining the crime and setting conditions for the exercise of jurisdiction over the crime. Article 123 states that such an addition to the Rome Statute must be considered and adopted at a Review Conference. In anticipation of the Review Conference mandated by the Rome Statute, the ASP created a Special Working Group on the Crime of Aggression (SWG) in 2002. The SWG was tasked with creating working proposals for amendments to the Rome Statute defining the crime of aggression and the Court's exercise of jurisdiction over the crime. The context within which the SWG undertook its work presented a number of challenges. First, the Court's three operative crimes (war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide) had been prosecuted in numerous cases before ad hoc international criminal tribunals and national courts in the decades prior to their inclusion in the Rome Statute. Aggression jurisprudence, on the other hand, has been frozen since the late 1940s, when several German and Japanese officials were prosecuted under the crime of aggressive war. Since the advent of the Cold War, no aggression prosecutions have been undertaken. The SWG, therefore, had no clear and current international practice on which to rely with respect to defining and exercising jurisdiction over the crime of aggression when compared with the three more established crimes. Second, since the end of the Cold War, international recognition has expanded for certain uses of force, including foreign military action to stop atrocities taking place within the borders of a country. Overall, U.N.-mandated peacekeeping operations have greatly increased in number since 1991. Any consideration of prosecuting illegal uses of force is complicated by the growing acceptance of military action considered acceptable by the international community. Third, while war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are jus in bello crimes, that is, crimes committed during an armed conflict, aggression is a jus ad bellum crime, involving a determination of the legality of the decision to initiate the armed conflict itself. Fitting a jus ad bellum crime into the established procedures and jurisdictional practice of three jus in bello crimes might prove difficult.