CROATIAN JUSTICE MINISTER: ICC TRUE SUCCESS OF THE CENTURY

NEW YORK, Sept 10 (Hina) - The establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is the most important legal achievement on the century, Croatian Justice Minister Ingrid Anticevic Marinovic said in her speech at an session of the assembly of ICC signatory countries in New York on Monday night. #L# "The international community finally has a permanent, universal and non-discriminative court which would try the perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, irrespective of their status or nationality," she said. Marinovic said she hoped that the ICC would put an end to the era of international criminal ad hoc adjudication, such as the Hague- based international war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), since such tribunals, she said, "are by their nature selective and limited in reach, and, as such, nothing more than palliative". Commenting on the fact that some countries, including the United States, had not only accepted the ICC Statute, but had also requested exemption for its citizens, Marinovic said that even- handed global justice could only be achieved through global participation. "In our view, frequently cited concerns for the protection of national interests are unnecessary and unfounded," she said. "The Statute contains a number of carefully drafted checks and balances -- beginning with the principle of complementarity which only reaffirms the primacy of national jurisdictions to the precisely defined elements of crimes, to the corrective role of the Pre-Trial Chamber and the prerogatives of the Assembly of States Parties (...) and finally, the explicit safeguards contained in Article 16 (of the Statute)." The Assembly of ICC States Parties ends on Tuesday with the adoption of decisions on the privileges and immunity of judges. Croatia has suggested its representative to join the ICC Assembly executive body, and even announced it would suggest a Croatian judge for the ICC. (hina) lml