Arbour spoke to the Earth Times at the international Forum 21, a gathering of political, cultural, and economic leaders that focuses on contemporary issues. She was scheduled to appear at a panel on "The future of global peace and civility: who makes and enforces the rules." 

Addressing the problem of the proposed court, she said, "The large question is whether the United States, which otherwise usually occupies the moral high ground, will be there. There's a lot of indication it will not, that it's in an extremely strange alliance with the people with whom it has very little in common, such as Iran and Iraq, among seven countries that opposed the Rome treaty creating a permanent court. There's an enormous concern the US will miss this opportunity to accept its moral and juridical leadership in putting the court into place." 

She found some hope in a recent "positive move" by the Bush administration. She explained, "The Clinton administration had an ambassador-at-large for war crimes. There were indications this post would be abolished. I understand there's been a change of policy. Bush is about to nominate a candidate for the post, which means the State Department is sending signals it's taking this agenda seriously. This is an extremely encouraging development." 

Arbour predicted, "It's going to go ahead whether the US is part of it or not. But without the US, it's a very impoverished institution. Not much of significance can happen with the active opposition of the US, but the like-minded countries, Scandinavia, the EU, Australia, New Zealand, will make this happen. Americans have a history of liking to be there in the beginning when the architecture of an idea is being fashioned. We have to persuade the Americans this is not a threatening institution for them." 

She said US opposition was ironic in view of the fact that the norms of the Geneva Conventions are very present in American military circles. The problem was that of being tried by foreigners. "But," she said, "The reality is that this fear is the reality is that this fear is totally ideological and not grounded in any real danger."

 In fact, she said, enforcing international law on military behavior was to the benefit of troops. She explained, "It is ironic that opposition to prosecutions for war crimes comes from military circles, because the body of law we are trying to enforce, the Geneva Conventions, is the only body of law that distinguishes a solidier in action from a common murderer. Their mission is to kill. That's a crime. The only justification for them to kill is international law. It's then particularly ironic that they walk away from the body of law that gives nobility to their profession as soldiers." 

Arbour remarked that a key difference between efforts to get the international court and the Nuremberg trials on, which it is based, is that the Nuremberg trials were held by the victors and those in the dock were the losers. The establishment of individual accountability was used to effect a beneficial political outcome for the Allied powers. She explained, "The Nuremberg trials went against the current of German accountability. That's why the Germans were allowed shortly to rejoin the international community, even to lead it in its more progressive wing." 

She said, "Nuremberg planted the seed of this idea that personal accountability of leadership can cleanse the collective guilt of a population which is otherwise condemned to a perpetual cycle of revenge--but nothing happened. It was stagnant after the Nuremberg trials for 50 years. " 

"Between Nuremberg and the two ad hoc tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, there was an era of human rights declarations: the genocide convention, the universal declaration of human rights, the convention against apartheid, the torture convention, the convention to abolish discrimination against women, the rights of the child. All these instruments affirmed human rights values." She noted, "The latter things were mostly the work of NGOs."

  "What happened to stop that movement to personal accountability?" she said. "The answer is that Nuremberg was a trial of the victors. The Allies decided to put the vanquished on trial. But the legal systems couldn't design a mechanism to make it permanent and universal. They thought it would take a treaty. It took the atrocities in Yugoslavia, when journalists discovered the camps in Omarska in Bosnia in 1992. It shocked the conscience of Europe into realizing that what they said in Nuremberg would never again happen was happening, not in the depths of Cambodia, but on the doorstep of Europe. That was the catalyst for strengthening this Nuremberg model."

 The movement for an international criminal court, Arbour said, was "launched with great skepticism in the mid-90s and now is unstoppable. People shouldn't be asking themselves should it happen - the idea of making political and military leaders accountable - but what should we do with these trials, what should be the purpose and the form."