From September 23 toNovember 7, 2002, the Sixth Committee of the 57thSession of the UN General Assembly met in the UN Headquarters inNew York.The Sixth Committee deliberated 16 topics in total.Of them, the important ones were:

1.Report of the International Law Commission on the work of its fifty-fourth session;

2.Measures to eliminate international terrorism;

3.Establishment of the International Criminal Court;

4.Convention on jurisdictional immunities of States and their property;

5.Scope of legal protection under the Convention on the Safety of the United Nations and Associated Personnel;

6.Report of the Special Committee on the Charter of the United Nations and on the Strengthening of the Role of the Organization;

7.Report of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law on the work of its thirty-fifth session.

The Chinese Delegation actively participated in the discussion of the above-mentioned topics.The main circumstances were as follows:

(1)Report of the International Law Commission on the work of its fifty-fourth session

This session discussed such special-item topics in the report on the work of the International Law Commission as "diplomatic protection", "reservations to treaties", "unilateral acts of States", "international liability for injurious consequences arising out of acts not prohibited by international law", "responsibility of international organizations" and "fragmentation of international law: difficulties arising from the diversification and expansion of international law".

With regard to the question of "diplomatic protection", the Chinese Government held that on the promises of exclusion of exceptional circumstances, to take nationality connection as the condition for diplomatic protection was not only in conformity with the theory and practice of the customary international law, but also was an important restriction on preventing the abuse of diplomatic protection, and that in regard to the exceptional cases of the exhaustion of local means of remedies rule, the International Law Commission should act with caution to keep a proper balance between the exhaustion of local means of remedies and their exceptional cases; and the exceptional cases should meet definite requirements and their application should be relatively defined.The Chinese Government also hoped that the International Law Commission will take the question of diplomatic protection as a priority topic for discussion in the next session and achieve results as soon as possible.

With regard to "the liability for compensation for injuries caused by acts not prohibited by international law", the Chinese Government agreed to the line of thinking of the Commission in its deliberation to determine that the operator should assume the main liability and, through some mechanism or insurance system, the parties concerned should share the liability for the injuries.At the same time, the Chinese Government hoped that the Commission should seek a balance of rights and obligations among the operator, the beneficiary and the victim when formulating rules for compensation.

With regard to "the responsibility of international organizations", the Chinese Government held that the basic principles established by the Commission on the concept of responsibility, the concept of international organization and the relationships between the responsibility of international organizations and the responsibility of States were basically workable.

The Chinese Government agreed with the International Law Commission to place "the fragmentation of international law" on the agenda as a special topic for study.It was of the view that the topic for study and the plan for study worked out by the Commission for the item of the agenda were workable and expressed the hope that a deep-going and useful study on the special topic would be conducted.

With regard to the special topic of "reservations to treaties", the Chinese Government was of the view that a treaty-keeping body was the keeper of the text of a treaty which could only conduct a formal examination of the keeping and, when necessary, call the attention of the countries concerned. The treaty-keeping body was not an interpreter of the text of a treaty, nor a judge for the acceptability of a reservation on a substantial content.Whether a reservation was acceptable should be decided by the parties to the treaty themselves.With regards the question of the supervisory body of a treaty, the Chinese Government agreed to the decision of the International Law Commission on the approach of not submitting draft principles to the Drafting Committee.On the question of partial withdrawal of a reservation, the Chinese Government held that it was of positive significance for a special reporter to draft clauses for the principles independently on the question of partial withdrawal of a reservation, but pointed out that it should be handled with caution, so as to avoid the occurrence of effects which would be unfavourable to the effective application of the treaty, and even adverse effects.

With regard to the topic of "unilateral acts of States", the Chinese Government was of the view that it was necessary for the International Law Commission to compile this topic for discussion.To bring about much more progress on this complicated topic, it was necessary not only to try as extensively as possible to collect and study the practice in various countries in this respect, but also, simultaneously with discussing general rules, to start to study some acts (such as protest, acknowledgement, renunciation and promise) that were relatively easy to determine their nature and legal validity and formulate concrete rules.

(2) Measures to eliminate international terrorism

The Chinese Delegation pointed out that the Chinese Government was consistently opposed to all forms of terrorism, no matter it occurred at what time, in which place, was directed at whom and appeared in what form.All actions for fighting against terrorism should comply with the purposes and principles of the United Nations and the generally recognized principles of international law and should be conducive to the preservation of peace and stability in the region and in the world.In fighting against terrorism, it was necessary to look into both the symptoms and the root cause.Political, economic, diplomatic, social and other measures should be taken in a comprehensive way to eliminate its root cause completely.Terrorism should not be linked up with any given ethnic group, religion or civilization.The diversification of civilizations should be recognized and respected.Different social systems and civilizations should be encouraged to seek common ground while reserving differences and embark on a road of common development.

The Chinese Delegation stated that the Chinese Government had been consistently active in participating in the international anti-terrorism cooperation and will continue to participate actively in the drafting of the Convention on the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism and the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, and hoped they would be adopted at an early date.The Chinese Government expressed its appreciation to the Security Council for including "the East Turkistan Islamic Movement" in its announced list of terrorist organizations and individuals.

(3) The establishment of International Criminal Court

The Chinese Delegation stated that the Chinese Government had all along understood and supported the establishment of an independent, impartial, effective and universal international criminal court.The Chinese Government had actively participated in the entire process of establishment an international criminal court and was willing to see that the court would perform its anticipated part.ThoughChinawas not yet a party to the Agreement on the International Criminal Court, the Chinese Government would, by adopting a serious and responsible attitude, continue to follow the progress and operation of the International Criminal Court and was ready to make further contributions to the rule of law in the international community.

(4) The Convention on jurisdictional immunities of States and their property

The Chinese Delegation pointed out that it had taken more than ten years for the United Nations to negotiation on the formulation of a convention on jurisdictional immunities of States and their property, and the main differences were concentrated on a number of questions such as the criteria for judging "State commercial acts", the relationship between a State and a State enterprises, and the compulsory measures against State property.Though some countries had formulated domestic legislations on jurisdictional immunities for foreign States and their property, if the international community could formulate a unified international convention, it would be of great significance to the regulation of States' acts and the clarification of States' jurisdiction and would produce positive influence on the safeguarding of the harmony and stability of international relationships.Therefore, the Chinese Delegation agreed to convene another meeting of the Special Committee in 2003 in anticipation of reaching consensus on formulating a convention on jurisdictional immunities of States and their property.

(5) The scope of legal protection under "the Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel"

The Chinese Delegation stated that the pressing matter of the moment was not the expansion of the scope of applying the Convention and the application of the scope of the protection of the Convention to all humanitarian organizations that appeared in the United Nations actions, but the enhancement of the universality of participating countries of the convention, especially the accession to the Convention by the host countries of UN actions.This was the key to the strengthening of the protective system of the Convention.In connection with the non-governmental organizations that carried out humanitarian actions but had no appropriate ties with the United Nations, the Chinese Government maintained that the existing international law did not provide any protection, and if a further protection was needed, it might be considered to realize it by formulating a separate international document.

(6) Report of the Special Committee of the United Nations Charter and the Strengthening of the Role of the United Nations

The Chinese Government maintained that in connection with the assistance to the third countries affected for executing measures of sanctions, the proposal for establishing a special fund and a mechanism for permanent consultation was significant and merited deep-going study.In regard of the question of sanctions as an approach to deal with threat and sabotage of international peace, the Chinese Government maintained that any decision to take sanction measures should be taken with caution; imposing a sanction should have strict criteria, especially should be in conformity with the United Nations Charter and the basic norms of international law; and one of the preconditions for taking a sanction should be the exhaustion of all means of peaceful settlement of international disputes as prescribed in the Charter. The Chinese Government did not agree to regard sanction as a preventive measure and maintained that sanction should not be unlimited in terms of time.With regard to the present state and the future of the Trustee Council, the Chinese Government maintained that for the time being there was no necessity and urgency to cancel or change its functions.And because cancellation or change of its functions involved the revision of the Charter, it should be given an overall consideration within the general framework of strengthening the role of the United Nations and the reform of the United Nations, and due caution should be exercised in making acts.

(7) Report of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law on the work of its thirty-fifth session

The Chinese Government was of the view that the Commission should fully consider different levels of development and the status of legislation of various member states and continue to strengthen the technical assistance and the training of personnel for developing countries; in the course of taking charge of formulating a series of conventions and model laws, the Commission should solicit opinions from various quarters more extensively, take account of the actual situations and objective needs of different countries, and make it possible for more countries to approve and accept the relevant conventions and model laws, so as to continuously promote the coordination and unity of different scopes of law and push forward the cooperation and development of the international trade.Moreover, the membership of the United Nations Commission on International Law should be expanded as soon as possible to guarantee that the composition of the Commission would represent various legal traditions and economic systems, truly reflecting the principle of equitable territorial representation.