The VICE-PRESIDENT, acting President: Please be seated. The Court meets now to hear the presentation by the Agent of Canada in the case between Yugoslavia and Canada. I call upon the distinguished Agent of Canada, Mr. Philippe Kirsch.

Mr. KIRSCH:

Introduction

1. Mr. President, Members of the Court, I am honoured to represent my country before the International Court of Justice, though one can find no comfort in the circumstances that have brought us here today. With me are Mr. Alan Willis, as Senior Counsel, Ms  Sabine Nölke and Ms Isabelle Poupart, as Counsel, and Mr. James Lynch, as Adviser.

2. Canada's representations today fall into two separate categories. First, we contest the jurisdiction of the Court and submit that the test of prima facie jurisdiction to be applied to provisional measures cannot be met. Second, we suggest that provisional measures of any kind - but particularly of the kind sought by the Applicant today - would in any event be fundamentally inappropriate, and indeed counter-productive. Taking account of the Court's discretion under Article 41 of the Statute, therefore, we respectfully submit that no measures should be indicated.

3. Mr. President, a prima facie case for jurisdiction, is more than a formal requirement. It is not enough that one or more instruments of a jurisdictional character should be cited in the Application. The Court should satisfy itself on a preliminary basis that these instruments are validly invoked and relevant to the subject-matter of the claim.

4. We shall argue today that the optional clause declaration filed by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on 25 April 1999 is a nullity on its face, because the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is not a party to the Statute of the Court. It has not fulfilled the requirements stipulated by the political organs of the United Nations in order to gain admission to that Organization, and it cannot automatically continue the membership of the old Yugoslavia. We shall also submit that, even if the declaration were valid, it is inapplicable by the terms of its own temporal restriction. The subject-matter of the Application is a dispute that pre-existed the 25 April declaration, and as such it is clearly outside the terms of that instrument. And finally, Mr. President, the Genocide Convention is a completely artificial basis for jurisdiction over an issue that has nothing to do with genocide, and it is especially irrelevant to a request for provisional measures that focus exclusively on the use of force.

5. That, Mr. President, is one branch of our argument today. The other is that this is not an appropriate case for the exercise of the Court's authority to grant provisional measures under Article 41. This is a discretionary power. Its exercise should never be automatic but should depend on the circumstances of the case. The Court should accordingly exercise its authority judiciously, taking account of all the circumstances under which the request is brought and of the underlying dispute. I respectfully suggest that it would be an inappropriate use of the power under Article 41 to lend aid and comfort to an applicant that comes to the Court, in such a matter as this, without clean hands. It would be a tragically misguided use of the power to lend credence to the unsubstantiated humanitarian accusations of a party whose own humanitarian abuses are at the root of the present dispute. It would turn reality on its head.

6. The measures sought today by the Applicant would not avoid irreparable harm, which is the principle governing provisional measures; they would create irreparable harm. It would be unthinkable that measures should be aimed at the NATO operations without addressing the fundamental root of the dispute, which is the conduct of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and its agents on the ground against the Albanian population of Kosovo. Any measures constraining the use of force by the NATO allies - and thus any measures in favour of the Applicant in this proceeding - would, as a matter of political reality, simply postpone the day when the tragedy in Kosovo is brought to an end and a political settlement is achieved. I will touch on some of the facts, but only as they relate to the criteria for indicating provisional measures. The Applicant's argument this morning was addressed on to merits as if we had already reached the merits phase and, while reserving our rights, it would be inappropriate for me to join issue on most of these allegations at this stage.

7. I turn now, Mr. President, to the first of our two principal points - the lack of prima facie jurisdiction.

PART I. JURISDICTION

8. A prima facie case for jurisdiction is an essential precondition for the granting of provisional measures. The Court is not required at this stage to make a final determination of the validity or the applicability of the cited instruments. But if prima facie jurisdiction is to have any real meaning, it requires a reasonably close scrutiny of the alleged basis of jurisdiction.

9. In a nutshell, Mr. President, there is no prima facie jurisdiction here for three reasons: first, because the purported optional clause declaration is a transparent nullity; second, because the declaration is inapplicable by its own terms to disputes in existence before 25 April; and third, because the facts alleged in the Application bear no genuine relation to the Genocide Convention which is invoked as a basis for jurisdiction.

1. The purported optional clause declaration of 25 April 1999

(a) A radical nullity

10. Mr. President, the purported declaration of 25 April 1999, can have no legal effects whatsoever. The Applicant, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, is not a party to the Statute. It cannot therefore make a valid declaration under Article 36, paragraph 2, which begins with the words "[t]he States parties to the present Statute may at any time declare . . ." The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is not a Member of the United Nations as a successor State. It has never been admitted under Article 4 of the Charter. Nor has the General Assembly or the Security Council made recommendations or fixed conditions for non-Member accession under Article 93, paragraph 2. These are matters of record, uncontested and uncontroversial.

11. In its 1993 Order on provisional measures in the current case concerning Application of the Genocide Convention1 against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Court did not find it necessary to determine definitively whether Yugoslavia as such is a Member of the United Nations, since jurisdiction was founded on its status as a party to the Genocide Convention. But as regards the question of the status of the Applicant in the present case, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia(Serbia and Montenegro), the situation is crystal clear. Security Council resolution 777 of 1992, quoted by the Court in its 1993 Order, declares that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia cannot continue automatically the membership of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the United Nations and recommends to the General Assembly that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia should apply for membership in the United Nations and that it shall not participate in the General Assembly. Only a few days later General Assembly resolution 47/1 of 1992 - also quoted by the Court in its material part - adopted that recommendation without change.

12. It is true, as the Court noted in paragraphs 17 and 18 of its 1993 Order, that the resolution does not terminate or suspend the membership of Yugoslavia in the Organization, actions that would have to be taken as measures under Articles 5 and 6 of the Charter. The old Yugoslavia is no longer in existence, but, has been done in other transitional situations, it may retain a kind of shadow existence for very limited purposes - the nameplate and the flag among others - all in the pragmatic interests of a smooth transition to a new régime. Because of these residual attributes of statehood, the Court said the solution adopted is not free of legal difficulty.

13. True enough - but those legal difficulties have absolutely no bearing on the matter at issue here. The issue today is not the status of the former Yugoslavia. It is the status of the entity now referred to as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which is the nominal Applicant in these proceedings. And on this narrow question, Mr. President, there is no difficulty and no ambiguity. The principal political organs of the United Nations have spoken with authority and exemplary clarity. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia - and I quote the language of the relevant United Nations resolutions2 - "cannot automatically continue the membership" of the old Yugoslavia in the United Nations. The Security Council and the General Assembly have ruled that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia should apply for such membership, and it has never been admitted. On no possible view of the relevant instruments can the present Applicant, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, be considered a Member of the United Nations and by that title a party to the Statute.

14. Article 93 of the United Nations Charter has been supplemented by Security Council resolution 9/19463, specifying the conditions on which the Court may be open to a State which is not a party to the Statute. The declaration filed by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is clearly not based on the 1946 resolution, which in any event could only be invoked on the basis of the "explicit agreement" of Canada according to the express terms of this document. The 1946 resolution is therefore irrelevant.

15. Is there then a prima facie title of jurisdiction? Not, surely, under the purported optional clause declaration made two weeks ago as a launching pad for this request. Article 36, paragraph 2, is unequivocal. An optional clause declaration can be made at any time by a State party to the Statute - and by no other entity. The paper filed on 25 April is a nullity. It provides no prima facie jurisdiction justifying a request for provisional measures under Article 41, as the stated preconditions of Article 41 have not been fulfilled.

(b) The declaration applies only to disputes arising after 25 April 1999

16. I turn now, Mr. President and distinguished Members of the Court, to another consideration - admittedly one that strictly need not be considered in the face of the nullity of the declaration, but that should nevertheless be brought to the attention of the Court.

17. The purported declaration contains a time condition. It applies only to disputes arising or which may arise after 25 April 1999. No doubt the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia found this a necessary precaution, following a decade of bloodshed and humanitarian catastrophe. Ordinarily, of course, a temporal restriction of this kind would cause no surprise. And yet here it utterly defeats the whole purpose of the so-called declaration, which is to bring before the Court a pre-existing dispute based on a conflict begun over a month prior to the stated effective date of the instrument. So, while the dilemma is easily understood, one is nevertheless perplexed by the self-defeating nature of the whole initiative. There is nothing in the description of the subject-matter of the dispute in the Application against Canada of 29 April that relates specifically to events subsequent to 25 April, or to any change in the character of the dispute subsequent to that date. The dispute referred to in the Applicant's own pleading, therefore, is not one arising or that may arise after 25 April 1999.

18. I note in passing that the events alleged in the Application and in the request are referred to not only without specific attribution to Canada - a matter to which I shall return - but without dates. This omission is surely not accidental. Indeed the request refers to a pattern of events "[f]rom the outset of the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia . . ." - clear evidence, if any were needed, that the object of the dispute is a campaign that was fully underway several weeks before the declaration was filed.

19. Time restrictions have often been inserted in optional clause declarations. As Rosenne has explained in his recent treaties4, their purpose is to exclude known dispute.

20. This dispute, Mr. President, was an existing dispute and a known dispute on 25 April and well before that date. It is therefore excluded from jurisdiction by the terms of the purported declaration itself. The NATO air operations against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia began on 24 March 1999, and of course the attitude of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia regarding those operations was unequivocal from the outset. By the terms of the frequently quoted Mavrommatis test5, there was a legal dispute in existence from the earliest days of the conflict.

21. It will be alleged, no doubt, that this is a continuing situation - that so long as the bombs continue to fall after the effective date of the declaration the temporal condition is met. Not so, Mr. President. The dispute is not infinitely divisible into the multitude of specific events that occur each and every day in the conduct of a military campaign. In Right of Passage6 the Court insisted on treating a complex dispute as a unity, notwithstanding the diversity of facts and situations out of which it arose. There cannot be a new and independent dispute with every bomb that falls.

22. It is indeed precisely because complex disputes are composed of a multitude of events, and because they extend over long periods of time, that the concept of the critical date has been developed - and why it has such importance.

23. Sometimes the establishment of a critical date can be a matter of controversy and difficulty. We have no such difficulty here. The dispute had crystallized as soon as the air operations were initiated, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had claimed the illegality of the use of force against it. It was the same dispute, in all material respects, on 25 April, and long before that date, as it was on 29 April.

24. This is very different from situations where some elements of the dispute may pre-date the declaration, but the dispute itself arose at a later stage. In Electricity Company of Sofia and Right of Passage, again for example, the crucial events that finally crystallized the dispute were subsequent to the exclusion date. Those comparisons are instructive. If one asks, "what essential, defining element of the present dispute was not yet in place by 25 April 1999" there can be only one answer: none at all. Nothing changed between 25 April and 29 April. All the defining elements of the dispute were in place well before 25 April. What has occurred since then is simply a continuation of a course of events already underway.

25. Mr. President, distinguished Members of the Court, the declaration of 25 April uses a time-honoured formula: "disputes arising or which may arise after the signature of the present Declaration, with regard to the situations or facts subsequent to this signature". This formula was freely chosen by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for reasons that are only too clear. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia must now live with the consequences of its own decision. If the declaration were valid, it would confer compulsory jurisdiction with respect to disputes arising after 25 April. It would confer no jurisdiction at all, however, with respect to disputes arising before that date, including the present one.

2. Article IX of the Genocide Convention

26. I turn now to the second purported title of jurisdiction invoked against Canada, Article IX of the Genocide Convention.

27. Genocide is the gravest of international crimes. Canada's participation in the NATO air operation was prompted by a pattern of events in Kosovo that has shocked the conscience of the world. With this background, there is a bitter irony in an accusation of genocide against Canada by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. There is also an air of unreality and a transparent cynicism about the Applicant's reliance on the Genocide Convention, which is nothing more than an artificial device aimed at securing a basis of jurisdiction before the Court. All this must be considered by the Court in determining whether a bare, unsubstantiated allegation of genocide can automatically be invoked as a prima facie basis of jurisdiction sufficient to justify an indication of provisional measures. Needless to say, these considerations are also highly relevant to how the Court should exercise its jurisdiction if it considers it does have the authority to act: but I shall come to that later in my argument.

28. The use of the Convention as a basis of jurisdiction is artificial, devoid of substance. Not only does the subject-matter of the claim and the allegations have nothing to do with the crime of genocide, but the provisional measures claimed have nothing to do with genocide. The measures requested are aimed exclusively at the cessation of the use of force, which is legally and factually a distinct matter - and for which a separate basis of jurisdiction is invoked. The Genocide Convention cannot, therefore, provide prima facie jurisdiction for the measures sought7.

29. The key issue here, Mr. President, is when does a treaty constitute a prima facie basis of jurisdiction? Obviously it must exist and bind the parties, and it must include a clause vesting jurisdiction in this Court. So far, so good. But that is not sufficient by itself. Jurisdiction under a treaty depends as well on the specific allegations of the claim. There can be no prima facie jurisdiction under a treaty if the subject-matter of the dispute is not plausibly related to the subject-matter of the treaty - as the analysis in Oil Platforms confirms (para. 16). Specifically, the Court has treaty jurisdiction if - but only if - the facts as alleged would constitute a violation of the treaty if proved.

30. By this standard, the Genocide Convention does nothing to advance the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia position on jurisdiction with respect to Canada. The reliance on the Convention amounts to a generalized paraphrase of Article II (c) of the Convention which defines as genocide "deliberately inflicting on a [national] group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part". Not a single relevant act is cited in support of this broad assertion, which is said to follow from the totality of the acts against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in which Canada is - in the words of the Application - "taking part".

31. There are two separate reasons why the Court should not treat a sweeping but unsubstantiated allegation of genocide as a prima facie basis of jurisdiction in the absence of relevant particulars. The very gravity of the crime means on the one hand that the Court should indeed act where it can to suppress genuine cases of genocide when faced with serious and substantiated allegations. By the same token, however, it should be very cautious before lending credence to accusations that are not only unsupported but that cannot be answered because of their utter lack of specificity. Natural justice requires such restraint. An even more compelling consideration is the danger that the moral weight attaching to Orders under Article 41 - a moral weight on which the efficacy of the power ultimately depends - could be gravely impaired by an automatic issuance of provisional measures respecting genocide on the basis of sweeping but unsubstantiated accusations.

32. And it is obvious why we have no particulars that are legally relevant. It is because the Applicant has no evidence. For we all know that if they had any real evidence of the commission of offences amounting to genocide by Canada, they would not have hesitated to provide the details to the Court. The absence of any substantiation leads necessarily to the conclusion that there is simply nothing there.

33. The second reason is that the use of the Genocide Convention as a title of jurisdiction is based on an implicit interpretation of the Convention that is not only bad law, but that threatens the integrity of the concept of genocide and the coherence of the law. The suggestion is that by taking part in the air operations, with the collateral damages and casualties a military campaign inevitably entails, Canada is automatically engaged in that form of genocide referred to in Article II (c), the deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to destroy a national group in whole or in part. On this view, any use of force and any act of war is automatically equated with genocide. This, Mr. President, is not only wrong but dangerous. The distinct domains of the law of genocide, the jus ad bellum and the jus in bello, would all be rolled up into one single ball, muddled and confused. All the recognized distinctions would be lost and with them the coherence - and much of the strength - of this whole body of law. The thrust of much of the argument and the illustration used this morning reflected this assumption that the use of force and genocide are identical concepts covering exactly the same ground in exactly the same way - a fundamental distortion of fundamental principles.

34. Not only are there no relevant particulars; there are no facts specifically imputed to Canada, either in relation to the Genocide Convention or in relation to the use of force. The Court will have noted that all the ten Applications are virtually identical except for the titles of jurisdiction. The result is that there is really no factual allegation in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Application or in the oral pleadings that Canada itself - Canada as an independent sovereign State and the single Party to this action - has committed acts amounting to genocide. This failure to relate the allegations to Canada itself - or indeed to any of the other Respondents - is sufficient to establish the lack of any prima facie jurisdiction under the Genocide Convention.

35. The Court will recall that at the time of the 1993 request for provisional measures by Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Court refused to countenance a variety of requested provisional measures concerned with the conflict but not clearly linked to the Genocide Convention, which of course was the prima facie jurisdictional basis for the Order. Applying here the same standard, the very same standard that the Court applied before, it is clear that the requested provisional measures must be rejected as unrelated in substance to the Convention.

36. To summarize on this point, Mr. President: the Genocide Convention has nothing to do with the real subject-matter of the dispute, which is the use of force, and not genocide as defined in the Convention and by the Court in its 1993 Order: "the intended destruction of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" (para. 42). And it is clear from the terms of the Applicant's request, which refer exclusively to the use of force, not genocide, that the provisional measures sought today can have no jurisdictional basis in the Convention.

PART II: NATURE OF PROVISIONAL MEASURES

37. Mr. President, distinguished Members of the Court, I turn now from the issue of prima facie jurisdiction to the second branch of my argument: that regardless of the evident lack of jurisdiction, this would not be an appropriate case for the granting of provisional measures under Article 41 of the Statute.

38. Mr. President, the provision for relief under Article 41 is not automatic. It is a form of equitable relief granted as a result of the exercise of the discretion of the Court based on a full range of considerations. A request of this nature therefore requires the Court to take all the circumstances into account in the exercise of this discretionary power.

39. First among these, Mr. President, is that the Applicant's own conduct is the essential cause of the dispute. A party should not be granted relief by the Court if its need for such relief is the consequence of its own grave and systematic breaches of international law, particularly of international humanitarian law, and of its own patent failure to comply with any of the relevant binding resolutions of the United Nations Security Council.

40. In her briefing to the United Nations Security Council on 5 May (which my delegation will make available to this Court), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees stated that this refugee crisis was "not new", and that her agency was providing assistance to 500,000 Kosovar Albanians in and outside Kosovo well before NATO air action began on 24 March. And she added:

"Kosovo is being emptied - brutally and methodically - of its ethnic Albanian population . . . Ethnic cleansing and mass forced expulsions are yielding their tragic results faster . . . than anybody's response."

The evidence from the most authoritative United Nations sources demonstrates, Mr. President, that it was the oppression of the Applicant's military and security forces, not the NATO campaign to stop the repression, which generated the refugee crisis.

41. The latest figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees8 indicate that more than 800,000 Kosovar Albanians, a full 67 per cent of the population of Kosovo, have fled the repression of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia forces. As of 7 May, more than 400,000 of these unfortunate subjects of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia were sheltering in Albania, the poorest country in Europe. Another 330,000 are in overflowing camps in Macedonia, where they now form 10 per cent of the population and where the crushing burden is threatening to destabilize that country. Almost 18,000 sought safety in Bosnia, itself still recovering from Federal Republic of Yugoslavia actions that are now under this Court's scrutiny in the Genocide case. Yet another 124,000 have applied for asylum in other countries, including Canada and the other respondent States.

42. The repression carried out by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia against ethnic Albanian civilians in Kosovo which triggered this mass exodus ranks among the worst crimes against humanity this century has seen. The acts of repression and serious violations of international humanitarian law committed against the Kosovar Albanians by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia include - as stated by the Commission on Human Rights four weeks ago9 - large-scale killings, systematic and planned massacres, summary executions, mass forced exoduses, destruction of personal identity documents, records, homes and property, as well as agricultural capacity, with a view to preventing their return. And I would emphasize, Mr. President, that all these violations relate to international legal obligations that constitute obligations erga omnes.

43. The Security Council of the United Nations has demanded, in resolutions 1160, 1199 and 1203 of 1998, that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia stop any repressive action against the civilian population of Kosovo; that its security forces stop attacks on the civilian population; that it withdraw all security units used for civilian repression; that it co-operate fully with international efforts to improve the humanitarian situation in Kosovo; that it take immediate steps to avert the humanitarian catastrophe; that it comply with its responsibility to create the conditions which would allow all refugees and displaced persons to return to their homes in safety; and that it co-operate fully with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

44. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has done none of this. And that is why we believe this Court ought not to entertain its request to be protected against its own violations.

45. There is another consideration that goes straight to the heart of the "irreparable harm" test which this Court has so assiduously applied throughout the years. The provisional measures sought today would leave the security forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia free to continue, or even accelerate, the massive repression and expulsion of the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo. Far from avoiding "irreparable harm", the effect of the provisional measures sought by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia would be devastating - above all for the one affected group that has no voice before this Court, the Albanian population of Kosovo.

46. This is a matter in which the international community has sought to develop a political solution to this intrinsically political problem. Now, as a direct result of the intransigence of the Applicant and its refusal to consider a peaceful solution that, in the words of the Security Council, "takes into account the rights of the Kosovar Albanians and all who live in Kosovo" (Security Council resolution 1160, 31 March 1998, OP5), the political problem has exploded. It has turned into the humanitarian catastrophe of tragic proportions that binding international legal instruments such as Security Council resolution 1199 had vainly sought to prevent. Not only is the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia seeking to obtain from this Court relief from the consequences of a problem of its own making; it is also seeking to evade its responsibility of ending the current crisis through the good-faith negotiations demanded by the Security Council more than a year ago.

47. Against this backdrop of active international diplomacy and politics, Canada submits the imposition of measures by this Court, following a determination that by its very nature is summary and based on limited consideration, would more likely add to the complexities of the situation than assist.

48. Mr. President, a final point. Provisional measures under Article 41 are intended to be conservatory. The essence of the request before the Court today is constraint on the use of force by NATO and the cessation of the air operations began by the North Atlantic Alliance some weeks ago. This is not a preservation of rights or a conservation of the status quo. It would simply give full satisfaction to one of the Parties, and free the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to continue its programme of ethnic cleansing without fear of reprisal. It would amount not to a provisional measure but to an anticipatory judgment on the merits in favour of the Applicant - a result clearly outside the intended scope of Article 41. And not only anticipatory, but irreversible; for in this time-critical situation, any attempt to tie the hands of NATO would have permanent consequences that even a final judgment could never alter or reverse.

49. The Applicant's goal in this request for provisional measures is to end the NATO air campaign, without conditions, without a political settlement, and - above all - without repatriation or relief for the Kosovar Albanians. Long before the final judgment, Kosovo would be emptied of Kosovars, and the economic and social structure of the surrounding countries in the region would be forever altered. That indeed would be a tragic misapplication of Article 41, a tragic abuse of the process of this Court by a party whose record cannot inspire confidence.

Conclusion

50. Mr. President, distinguished Members of the Court, in conclusion, Canada believes that this Court lacks prima facie jurisdiction on any of the heads of jurisdiction advanced by the Applicant. There are also compelling reasons why provisional measures would be inappropriate and counter-productive in the circumstances of this case.

51. If, and only if, despite all these considerations, the Court were nevertheless to exercise its powers under Article 41, we would simply note that the Court has the authority to consider, proprio motu, measures ensuring that the rights of all interested parties to the dispute are safeguarded. It would, as I said at the outset, be unthinkable to envisage provisional measures in this matter that fail to address, as the first priority, the real cause of the dispute - not the NATO air operation, but the grave and persistent oppression of the Kosovar Albanians by the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

52. Mr. President, distinguished Members of the Court, I thank the Court for its courteous attention. I now conclude my presentation with the following submission on behalf of the Government of Canada:

Canada respectfully requests the Court to reject the request for provisional measures made by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on 29 April 1999.

Thank you very much for your attention.

The VICE-PRESIDENT, acting President: Thank you, Mr. Kirsch, for your presentation. The Court will now adjourn for a few minutes and resume to consider the case between Yugoslavia and France.

The Court rose at 4.50 p.m.

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