a land frontier or a boundary line in the continental shelf that is in question, the process is essentially the same, and inevitably involves the same element of stability and permanence, and is subject to the rule excluding boundary agreements from fundamental change of circumstances. 86. The second contention mentioned in paragraph 82 above does not put the question to be decided in its correct context. The question for decision is whether the present dispute is one "relating to the territorial status of Greece", not whether the rights in dispute are legally to be considered as "territorial" rights; and a dispute regarding entitlement to and delimitation of areas of continental shelf tends by its very nature to be one relating to territorial status. The reason is that legally a coastal State's rights over the continental shelf are both appurtenant to and directly derived from the State's sovereignty over the territory abutting on that continental shelf. This emerges clearly from the emphasis placed by the Court in the North Sea Continental Shelfcases on "natural prolongation" of the land as a critenon for determining the extent of a coastal State's entitlement to continental shelf as against other States abutting on the same continental shelf (I.C.J. Reports 1969, pp. 31 et seq.); and this criterion, the Court notes, has been invoked by both Greece and Turkey during their negotiations concerning the substance of the present dispute. As the Court explained in the above-mentioned cases, the continental shelf is a legal concept in which "the principle is applied that the land dominates the sea" (I.C.J. Reports 1969, p. 5 1 , para. 96); and it is solely by virtue of the coastal State's sovereignty over the land that rights of exploration and exploitation in the continental shelf can attach to it, ipso jure, under international law. In short, continental shelf rights are legally both an emanation from and an automatic adjunct of the territorial sovereignty of the coastal State. It follows that the territorial régime-the territorial status-of a coastal State comprises, ipsojure, the rights of exploration and exploitation over the continental shelf to which it is entitled under international law. A dispute regarding those rights would, therefore, appear to be one which may be said to "relate" to the territorial status of the coastal State. 87. The particular circumstances of the present dispute have also to be taken into account. The basic question at issue, as the Court has aiready mentioned, is the one formulated in the first submission in the Application, and it requires the Court to decide whether certain named Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, "as part of the territory of Greece", are entitled to a portion of continental shelf. Earlier in the Application, under the heading "The Subject of the Dispute", it is explained that in 1974, when the Greek Govemment in a diplomatic Note asserted its claim to continental shelf rights in respect of these islands, the Turkish Government retorted that the islands "do not possess a [continental] shelf of their own". The two