Governments, as appears from the Application, maintained their respective positions in the diplomatic negotiations which followed, and in a Note of 22 May 1976 the Greek Government recalled that it had emphasized as two of the fundamental legal points in the dispute: (a) "the territorial and political unity of the continental and insular parts of the Greek State"; (b) "the existence of a continental shelf appurtenant to the [Greek] islands concerned". In the same Note, it had also recalled and rejccted the Turkish Government's reference to the islands as "mere protuberances on the Turkish continental shelf" having no continental shelf of their own. Summarizing its legal position in paragraph 29 of the Application, the Greek Government names the islands concerned and reaffirms its contention that they "are an integral part of Greek territory which is entitled to the portion of [the] continental shelf which appertains to them". It then expressly rests its claims to continental shelf in respect of those islands upon "the territorial and political unity of Greece". 88. It follows that the claims and contentions advanced by Greece in its first submission directly relate to its territorial status as this was established by the various treaties through which was constituted the corpus of the territory of the Greek State today. These claims and contentions, as appears from the Application and the diplomatic correspondence, are directly contested by Turkey and form the very core of the present dispute. Consequently, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that, on this ground alone, the present dispute is one which "relat[es] to the territorial status of Greece". 89. In the present case, moreover, quite apart from the question of the status of the above-mentioned Greek islands for the purpose of determining Greece's entitlement to continental shelf, the Court notes that during the hearings in 1976 the Greek Government referred to a certain straight base-line claimed by Turkey which is, however, contested by Greece. Although it recognized that the resulting discrepancy between the Greek and Turkish views of the limits of Turkey's territorial sea in the area is not great, it observed that the discrepancy "obviously affects the question of the delimitation of the continental shelf". The question of the limits of a State's territorial sea, as the Greek Government itself has recognized, is indisputably one which not only relates to, but directly concerns territorial status. 90. Having regard to the various considerations set out above, the Court is of the opinion that the present dispute is one which "relat[es] to the territorial status of Greece" within the meaning of reservation (b) in Greece's instrument of accession to the General Act. It accordingly finds that Turkey's invocation of the reservation on the basis of reciprocity has the effect of excluding the present dispute from the application of Article 17 of the Act.