The ICC International Court of Arbitration Bulletin is pleased to reproduce in this issue a series of papers that were delivered on the occasion of the AAA/ICC/ICSID 15th Joint Colloquium on International Arbitration held in Paris at the end of last year.

These papers focus on highly topical international arbitration issues that revolve around the powers of arbitrators, the powers of parties in arbitral proceedings and their reciprocal interaction. These questions are currently the subject of stimulating debates around the world regarding the pro-active attitude of arbitral tribunals in connection with the handling of arbitral proceedings and are addressed here from vastly different standpoints by Messrs Pierre A. Karrer, Antonio R. Parra, Francisco Orrego Vicuña, Bernardo M. Cremades and Donald Francis Donovan.

The reader will also find here extensive information on the development of ICC arbitration through the comprehensive statistical report for 1998 published in these pages. It includes an analysis and explanation of the detailed figures showing the evolution of ICC arbitration in 1998 as compared with previous years. The report addresses progression in the number of requests, the parties to ICC arbitration cases, the status of cases filed, the origins of the arbitrators, the arbitration agreements, the economic sectors, the amounts in dispute, conciliation and ad hoc appointments and the ICC International Centre for Expertise.

The reader will find some interesting developments reflected by the statistics contained in this report such as the growing global and multicultural nature of ICC arbitration and the increasing number of cases submitted to unipersonal, rather than collegiate, arbitral tribunals. The overview of the application of the Rules by the Court provided by Fabien Gélinas extends the picture to the inner workings of the Court by putting numbers on the application of various important provisions of the ICC Rules.

This issue also follows up on the evolution of the Court membership and the significant staff changes at the Court's Secretariat since the publication of the last issue.

Horacio Grigera Naón

Secretary General

ICC International Court of Arbitration