impracticable where the same matter is instituted before “another International Court” for adjudication. Hence, the fact that the Burkinabe courts may have been seised with the case, whether in part or in whole, does not constitute an obstacle for the Court to entertain that same case. In the same vein, it must be recalled that the rule of exhaustion of local remedies is not applicable before the ECOWAS Court of Justice. AS TO MERITS Once the foregoing points are clear and precise, the Court now holds that in the light of the totality of all the facts and law produced before it in the course of the proceedings, the instant case poses two problems. Firstly, the issue of disallowing Mr. Djibril Yipéné Bassolé from choosing lawyers of “foreign nationality”, and secondly, that of the legitimacy or otherwise of the telephone conversations which may have been tapped. The position of the Court shall condition the fate of the request for reparation, as made by the Applicant. REGARDING RESTRICTIONS IMPOSED ON THE APPLICANT’S CHOICE OF LAWYERS To justify the restriction imposed on the Applicant’s choice of his Counsel, Burkina Faso advances several arguments worth revisiting. The first touches on the 24 April 1961 Convention on Judicial Co-operation signed between France and Upper Volta, whose Article 34 provides: “Lawyers registered with the Bar Associations of Upper Volta may assist or represent parties before all the courts of France, both at the preliminary inquiry stage and during oral hearings, under the same conditions as lawyers registered with the Bar Associations of France. In reciprocal terms, lawyers registered with the Bar Associations of France may assist or represent parties before all the courts of Upper Volta, both at the preliminary inquiry stage and during the oral hearings, under the same conditions as lawyers registered with the Bar Associations of Upper Volta.” The Defendant State contests the right of the lawyer of French nationality, Counsel to the Applicant, to assume that capacity, principally because the said lawyer of French nationality did not provide evidence for the reciprocal terms stated in the aforesaid provision. 8