As the Bulletin enters its fifth year, this issue begins with a timely contribution from Mr. ALAIN PLANTEY, Chairman of the ICC International Court of Arbitration, reviewing the increasingly important role of international commercial arbitration in the world legal order and the growing diversity of the international arbitral process.

The diversity of that process is once again reflected in the Court's annual statistical report for 1993 included in this issue. That report provides a revealing profile of the nature and extent of the Court's current activity. As stated in the report, the parties involved in the requests for arbitration received by the ICC Court's Secretariat in 1993 came from a record number of 94 different countries, and arbitrators were appointed from 52 countries.

The information in this issue about the Court's activity in 1993 is complemented by the sixth instalment in the Bulletin's on-going series of articles on the ICC arbitral process. The present instalment is composed of three particularly informative articles on the arbitral award contributed by Marcel Fontaine, Humphrey Lloyd and David McGovern, the last of which describes the manner in which draft awards are scrutinised by the ICC Court before they are put into final form. The scrutiny process is, indeed, one of the distinctive features of the ICC arbitration system. Messrs. Fontaine and Lloyd, meanwhile, provide practical guidance regarding the drafting of awards, a subject upon which relatively little has been written to date.

Jan Paulsson and Nigel Rawding follow with a thought-provoking and important piece on the subject of confidentiality in arbitration. Although the confidentiality of the arbitration process is often taken for granted by parties, the subject is considerably more complex than first meets the eye, as Messrs. Paulsson and Rawding show. Their article contains a number of interesting suggestions that undoubtedly deserve careful consideration.

An article by Jean-Paul Beraudo on the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods rounds out the series of articles in this issue. The Vienna Convention, as it is otherwise knows, has taken on considerable importance with respect to the international sale of goods, and the legal rules laid down by that Convention are therefore becoming increasingly relevant to disputes submitted to international arbitration. Mr. Beraudo's article will be of interest to all those concerned with such disputes.

Eric A. Schwartz

Secretary General

ICC International Court of Arbitration