Since then, the struggle to pin responsibility on people for mass killings and genocide has been uphill. Today with unabashed hypocrisy, market access considerations, arms trade and selective condemnation of human rights abuses have clouded the international scene. Nothing is simple and straightforward anymore.

Just how murky the international business of declaring war and imposing peace by mixed bags of friends now-foes has become was evident at five weeks of strenuous United Nations negotiations that culminated today in Rome with the world getting its first permanent international court to try war crimes. The United States mounted a campaign to limit the court's reach to prevent it from prosecuting any American citizen without its permission even as a 113 countriesapplauded its birth.

"It is truly tragic that we have reached a juncture today where our desire to be in the leadership, our desire to be an engine of this court has been derailed," Ambassador David Scheffer, head of the US delegation said as his country opted out.

While the United States opposed the treaty alongwith Iraq, China and Libya for what they said was the negotiations' failure to keep the new International Criminal Court (ICC) on a tight leash, India abstained for the treaty's failure to include use of nuclear weapons as war crimes but did not oppose the treaty because New Delhi upheld its basic principles.

The rest of the world voted overwhelmingly (113 for, 17 against, 25 abstentions) to create the ICC which will operate out of The Hague in Netherlands and will bring individuals to justice for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and aggression.

The new international court which could take up to five years to become truly operational will be independent of the UN and will be ableto act even when the international community is divided as was in the Balkans and Africa. A temporary war crimes tribunal also in The Hague, was established in 1993 by the UN Security Council to proseute war crimes in former Yugoslavia. Another UN court based in Arusha, Tanzania, is pursing atrocities committed in the 1994 Rwandan genocide that left an estimated 800,000 dead and missing.

Under the guidelines, a case can be initiated at the ICC by the prosecutor with the approval of a pre-trial panel of judges by a country or by the UN's Security Council. India failed in its bid to keep the Security Council out of the decision making loop.

Permission from the nation where the alleged crime was committed is enough for a court to go forth with a case. The US wanted the treaty to give it the option to veto the prosecution of any American citizen. With troops deployed in hot spots around the world, Washington fears they could become easy targets of politicallly motivated charges.

The US also strongly opposedthe creation of an independent prosecutor arguing that only the Security Council or countries should be allowed to bring a case. The escape clause as sought by the US and opposed by the majority of the countries gathered in Rome would in effect give the dictators of this world free run.

The treaty sets a very high threshold for the court to take up crimes committed in internal armed conflicts, the most common warfare in the 1990s.

Pitched diplomatic battles preceded the establishment of a list of crimes and their precise definitions. The list of crimes, for example, was expanded to add aggression which the non-aligned countries has sought. In a clear nod to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- also the five official nuclear weapons states -- the treaty omits any specific reference to nuclear weapons and a proviso on war crimes addresses France's concerns.

A deal was reached on adding "forced pregnancy" to the list of war crimes.