"I'm sure a mutually convenient solution can be found," he said, a day after US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld slammed the law as "absurd" and said that Washington was suspending its funding for a new NATO headquarters.

Robertson stressed that Belgium's so-called universal competence law was of concern to all NATO members, not only the United States.

"This is not about a bilateral argument between the Americans and the Belgians...the issue here is a bigger one than just one country and the Alliance."

A number of lawsuits have been filed in Belgium under the law, including action against former US president George Bush, the US commander in the recent Iraq war, and an Israeli general.

The 1993 law allows courts in Belgium to judge suspects accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, regardless of where the alleged acts were committed, the nationality of the accused or that of the victims.

On Thursday Rumsfeld told his NATO colleagues in Brussels that Washington would not fund work on a new NATO headquarters, due to be built by the end of the decade, until the matter was resolved.

"The Americans have made it clear they will not allow any expenditure during the next six months and we'll obviously want to see what implications that would have for the project as a whole," said Robertson.

"But we're not at the building stage yet so it may not have a huge impact," he added.

But he said: "The alliance, the EU and other international organisations in Brussels need to know that people can come and go to meetings."

NATO has been based in Brussels since 1967, when it moved from Paris after France pulled out of the Alliance's integrated military command structure.

NATO earlier this year launched plans for a new headquarters near to its current ageing compound on the outskirts of the Belgian capital. The cost of the project is estimated at more than 300 million euros.

WAR.WIRE