12 AEGEAN SEA (JUDGMENT) 28. Af ter recalling the 10-11 March 1978 meeting at Montreux between the Prime Ministers, the letter claimed that: "The necessary conditions for the conduct of frank and serious negotiations, and the spirit whch should motivate the parties concerned, with a view to the settlement of their problems by such negotiations, are not reconcilable with the continuation of international judicial proceedings." Furthermore, in a Note Verbale to the Greek Government of 29 September 1978 concerning the Greek request for a postponement of the beginning of the oral proceedings in the case, the Turkish Government objected to the postponement, and expressed the opinion that: ". . . the discontinuance of the proceedings and the removal of the case from the list of the International Court of Justice would be more conducive to the creation of a favourable political climate for an agreed settlement". 29. The Turkish Government's attitude rnight thus be interpreted as suggesting that the Court ought not to proceed with the case while the parties continue to negotiate and that the existence of active negotiations in progress constitutes an impediment to the Court's exercise of jurisdiction in the present case. The Court is unable to share this view. Negotiation and judicial settlement are enumerated together in Article 33 of the Charter of the United Nations as means for the peaceful settlement of disputes. The jurisprudence of the Court provides various examples of cases in which negotiations and recourse to judicial settlement have been pursued paripassu. Several cases, the most recent being that concerning the Trialof Pakistani Prisoners of War (I.C.J. Reports 1973, p. 347), show that judicial proceedings may be discontinued when such negotiations result in the settlement of the dispute. Consequently, the fact that negotiations are being actively pursued during the present proceedings is not, legally, any obstacle to the exercise by the Court of its judicial function. 30. The above-mentioned observations of the Turkish Government might also be interpreted as making the point that there is no dispute between the parties while negotiations continue, so that the Court could not for that reason be seised of jurisdiction in t h s case. As the Court recognized in its Order of 11 September 1976, the existence of a dispute can hardly be open to doubt in the present case. Counsel for Greece correctly stated that there is in fact a double dispute between the parties: "There is a dispute about what the continental shelf boundaries in the Aegean Sea should be, and there is a dispute as to the method whereby this first dispute should be settled-whether by negotiation