PETALING JAYA: A former head of the Research, Treaties and International Law Department has made known how the Rome Statute became a political hot potato due to vested interests – critics who ironically had agreed to its ratification eight years ago.

Datuk Noor Farida Ariffin, who was the department head in 2011, presented the instrument to accession to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to the Cabinet under then prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and government agencies.