Backers of the International Criminal Court (ICC) called on Monday for the United States to reconsider its opposition to the new global court and urged signatories to pay their dues so it can do its work.
Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot, whose country holds the rotating European Union presidency, told the annual meeting of ICC signatories he regretted the US stance and said Europe wanted all countries to sign up to the court.
"We must and shall continue dialogue with the United States to promote better understanding of our respective positions and to find ways to stand shoulder to shoulder to combat impunity," Bot told the first session of the week-long meeting.
As the first permanent global criminal court, the ICC was set up to try individuals for the world's worst atrocities - genocide, war crimes and systematic human rights abuses.
The court's statutes came into force in 2002 and the Hague-based ICC opened its first investigations this year, into crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda.
Half of UN member states have ratified the court's treaty and the ICC expects to have 100 signatories by next year, but the United States has spurned it and has lobbied other nations to do so too, or at least exempt US soldiers from prosecution.
ICC president Judge Philippe Kirsch said he was sure the court would show that US concerns that its citizens would be targeted by politically-motivated prosecutions were ill-founded.
"What the court can do now is ... demonstrate through its action that it does carry out proceedings that are fair, effective and transparent," he told a news conference.
In June, the United States withdrew a UN Security Council resolution seeking an exemption for US soldiers from the ICC because it lacked enough support in the wake of the scandals over US abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Richard Dicker, of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said he saw no imminent change in US policy even if Democrat challenger John Kerry were to beat President George W. Bush in the November election.
"The Bush administration is on an ideological jihad against this court," he said. "I don't think a Kerry administration would come rushing with open arms but I would hope it would cease the relentless efforts to undermine the court."
Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al-Hussein, the Jordanian president of the assembly of ICC signatories, said he was convinced more countries would sign up despite a US threat to stop aid to those that do not agree to guarantee its soldiers immunity.
"In defence of the court, many of us, including some of the poorest of us, have seen fit to forfeit great material advantage," he said. "There is no new institution like this institution that offers us any hope that this century is going to be any less bloody than the previous century."
Al-Hussein, Jordan's UN ambassador, urged the 94 ICC signatories to settle their arrears with the court.
"The court is not and cannot be considered ... as too expensive, certainly not at a time when we, the international community, are willing to spend nearly a trillion US dollars on weapons a year," he said.