Crimes against humanity and war crimes will be established as offences in Irish law as part of new legislation in the Republic to recognise the International Criminal Court.
The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, published a Bill yesterday to give effect to the court's statute in Irish law.
The Bill provides for the prosecution of those who commit crimes, but also of heads of state and government officials who use their authority to order crimes to be carried out by others.
The call for the creation of a permanent court was first made in 1948, after the second World War. But it was only after the mass killings of the Rwandan and Balkan civil wars in the 1990s that the international community endorsed its establishment.
Pending its setting-up, actions such as those against the former Serbian leader, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, have been taken at ad-hoc tribunals.
The Irish judge at those proceedings, Ms Maureen Harding Clarke, has been elected a judge of the International Criminal Court. Recognition of the court in Irish law was endorsed by a constitutional referendum in June 2001, where 64.22 per cent of voters favoured the measure.
The Bill's publication comes 13 months after the court, based in The Hague, was established. Although it will be introduced in the Dáil in the autumn, the Department of Justice would say only it was hoped it would pass into law "as soon as possible".
The 18 judges of the court were inaugurated last March, at which time the statute had already been endorsed by 89 governments. Controversially, however, the US government has refused to ratify it.
The court has jurisdiction to investigate, prosecute and punish people guilty of the "most serious" offences of concern to the international community.
