43 AEGEAN SEA (JUDGMENT) 104. The Court can see nothing in the terms of the Rome Communiqué of 19 May 1975, or in the subsequent accounts of the meeting given by the two Governments, which kight indicate that Turkey was then ready to contemplate, not a joint submission of the dispute to the Court, but a general acceptance of the Court's jurisdiction with respect to it. On the contrary, the positions of the Greek and Turkish Governments on this point appear to have been quite unchanged when, only a few days later on 31 May 1975, the two Prime Ministers began their meeting in Brussels. 105. Consequently, it is in that context-a previously expressed willingness on the part of Turkey jointly to submit the dispute to the Court, after negotiations and by a special agreement defining the matters to be decided-that the meaning of the Brussels Joint Communiqué of 31 May 1975 has to be appraised. When read in that context, the terms of the Communiqué do not appear to the Court to evidence any change in the position of the Turkish Government in regard to the conditions under which it was ready to agree to the submission of the dispute to the Court. It is true that the Communiqué records the decision of the Prime Ministers that certain problems in the relations of the two countries should be resolved peacefully by means of negotiations, and as regards the continental shelf of the Aegean Sea by the Court. As appears however from paragraph 97 above, they also defined the general lines on the basis of which the forthcoming meetings of the representatives of the two Governments would take place and decided in that connection to bring forward the date of the meeting of experts. These statements do not appear to the Court to be inconsistent with the general position taken up by Turkey in the previous diplomatic exchanges: that it was ready to consider a joint submission of the dispute to the Court by means of a special agreement. At the same time, the express provision made by the Prime Ministers for a further meeting of experts on the continental shelf does not seem easily reconcilable with an immediate and unqualified commitment to accept the submission of the dispute to the Court unilaterally by Application. In the light of Turkey's previous insistence on the need to "identify" and "elucidate" the issues in dispute, it seems unlikely that its Prime Minister should have undertaken such a commitment in such wide and imprecise terms. 106. The information before the Court concerning the negotiations between the experts and the diplomatic exchanges subsequent to the Brussels Communiqué appears to confirm that the two Prime Ministers did not by their "decision" undertake an unconditional cornmiment t0 submit the continental shelf dispute to the Court. The two sides, it is true, put somewhat different interpretations upon the meaning of the Communiqué, the Turkish side insisting upon the need for meaningful negotiations on the substance of the dispute before any submission to the Court, the Greek side pressing for the case to be taken directly to the Court. From the