As the Greek Agent confirmed in reply to a question put by the Court, the words "the repetition of one of the two reservations which we formulated when we accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the Permanent Court" refer unequivocally to the reservation of "territorial status" already used in Greece's declaration under the optional clause and thus already known to the Chambre des députés. Theprojet de loi was approved without discussion and without change, so that reservation (b) must be presumed to have been included in Greece's instrument of accession on the basis of the explanations given in the exposé des motifs. 67. Accordingly, when the Chambre des députés authorized the deposit of Greece's instrument of accession to the General Act, it could only have believed that Greece was making its accession subject to precisely the same reservation of disputes relating to its territorial status as the Chambre had previously authorized for its declaration under the optional clause. It seems reasonable to assume that, if any change had been intended in the scope of the "territorial status" reservation, to which particular importance was attached by Greece, some indication and explanation of that change would have been included in the exposé des motifs. But there is no evidence of such a change of intention either in the exposé des motifs or in any other contemporary document before the Court. 68. Having regard to the several considerations which have been mentioned by the Court, as well as to the explanation of reservation (b) given in the exposé des motifs, the Court feels bound to conclude that the wording of reservation (b) did not have the effect of integrating the reservation of disputes relating to territorial status into the reservation of disputes concerning questions of domestic jurisdiction. On the contrary, the Court finds that reservation (b) comprises two reservations, one of disputes concerning questions of domestic jurisdiction and the other a distinct and autonomous reservation of "disputes relating to the territorial status of Greece, including disputes relating to its rights of sovereignty over its ports and lines of communication". Accordingly, it is on this basis that the Court will now consider the application of reservation (b) to the present dispute. Moreover, as only this autonomous reservation of disputes relating to territorial status is relevant in connection with the present dispute, any further reference to reservation (b) by the Court will be exclusively to the second part which concerns disputes relating to Greece's territorial status. 69. The Greek Government maintains that a restrictive view has to be taken of the meaning of the expression "disputes relating to the territorial status of Greece" in reservation (b) by reason of the historical context in which that expression was incorporated into the reservation. In this

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