the General Act under Article 29, so that an autonomous reservation of
disputes relating to territorial status was not really indispensable to
Greece. The difficulty with this suggestion, however, is that these procedures by no means covered al1 possible claims relating to territorial status
and to rights of sovereignty over ports and lines of communication. It is
true that the Treaty of Neuilly provided for recourse to the Permanent
Court or to other methods of pacific settlement on questions relating to
minorities and certain other matters, but special procedures were never
established for the settlement of disputes concerning the parts of the
Treaty dealing with Bulgaria's economic outlet to the Aegean Sea.
62. The Court is not, therefore, convinced by the several explanations
which have been put fonvard to account for the difference between
Greece's territorial status reservation in its declaration under the optional
clause and that in its instrument of accession to the General Act, if the
latter instrument is given the meaning contended for by Greece. It also
appears significant that no support for any of these explanations can be
found in the contemporary evidence placed before the Court relating to the
making of Greece's declaration under the optional clause in 1929 and to
the deposit of its instrument of accession in 1931. This evidence will now be
examined.
63. During the public hearings on its request for interim measures, the
Greek Government submitted to the Court a document referred to by
counsel as "the travauxpréparatoires of the reservation". This was a letter
addressed by M. Politis to the Greek Foreign Minister on 9 September
1928, setting out the reservations which he recommended that Greece
should make to its acceptance of the Permanent Court's jurisdiction under
the optional clause. M. Politis was at that time the Rapporteur for the
drafting of the General Act which was then nearing completion, and in that
letter he said, inter afia:
"1 think that it would be wise to safeguard ourselves against an
eventual application of Bulgaria on matters related to Our territorial
status, to the access (of Bulgaria) to the Aegean and to the protection
of Bulgarian-speaking minorities in Greece."
He went on to suggest a possible text of a declaration to give effect to his
recommendation whch contained the following three reservations:
(a) disputes relating to the territorial status of Greece;
(b) disputes relating to its rights of sovereignty over its ports and lines of
communication;
(c) disputes for the settlement of which the treaties signed by it provide
another procedure.