120 Report of the International Law Commission on the work of its fifty-third session be in writing, nor is it a condition for the operation of the obligation to provide reparation. Moreover, the requirement of notification of the claim does not imply that the normal consequence of the non-performance of an international obligation is the lodging of a statement of claim. Nonetheless, an injured or interested State is entitled to respond to the breach and the first step should be to call the attention of the responsible State to the situation, and to call on it to take appropriate steps to cease the breach and to provide redress. (4) It is not the function of the articles to specify in detail the form which an invocation of responsibility should take. In practice, claims of responsibility are raised at different levels of government, depending on their seriousness and on the general relations between the States concerned. In the Certain Phosphate Lands in Nauru case, Australia argued that Nauru’s claim was inadmissible because it had “not been submitted within a reasonable time”.676 The Court referred to the fact that the claim had been raised, and not settled, prior to Nauru’s independence in 1968, and to press reports that the claim had been mentioned by the new President of Nauru in his independence day speech, as well as, inferentially, in subsequent correspondence and discussions with Australian Ministers. However, the Court also noted that: It was only on 6 October 1983 that the President of Nauru wrote to the Prime Minister of Australia requesting him to “seek a sympathetic reconsideration of Nauru’s position”. 677 The Court summarized the communications between the parties as follows: The Court … takes note of the fact that Nauru was officially informed, at the latest by letter of 4 February 1969, of the position of Australia on the subject of rehabilitation of the phosphate lands worked out before 1 July 1967. Nauru took issue with that position in writing only on 6 October 1983. In the meantime, however, as stated by Nauru and not contradicted by Australia, the question had on two occasions been raised by the President of Nauru with the competent Australian authorities. The Court considers that, given the nature of relations between Australia and Nauru, as well as the steps thus taken, Nauru’s Application was not rendered inadmissible by passage of time. 678 In the circumstances, it was sufficient that the respondent State was aware of the claim as a result of communications from the claimant, even if the evidence of those communications took the form of press reports of speeches or meetings rather than of formal diplomatic correspondence. (5) When giving notice of a claim, an injured or interested State will normally specify what conduct in its view is required of the responsible State by way of cessation of any continuing wrongful act, and what form any reparation should take. Thus, paragraph 2 (a) provides that the injured State may indicate to the responsible State what should be done in order to cease the wrongful act, if it is continuing. This indication is not, as such, binding on the responsible State. The injured State can only require the responsible State to comply with its obligations, and the legal consequences of an internationally wrongful act are not for the injured State to stipulate or define. But it may be helpful to the responsible State to know what would 676 Certain Phosphate Lands in Nauru, Preliminary Objections (see footnote 230 above), p. 253, para. 31. 677 Ibid., p. 254, para. 35. 678 Ibid., pp. 254–255, para. 36. satisfy the injured State; this may facilitate the resolution of the dispute. (6) Paragraph 2 (b) deals with the question of the election of the form of reparation by the injured State. In general, an injured State is entitled to elect as between the available forms of reparation. Thus, it may prefer compensation to the possibility of restitution, as Germany did in the Factory at Chorzów case,679 or as Finland eventually chose to do in its settlement of the Passage through the Great Belt case.680 Or it may content itself with declaratory relief, generally or in relation to a particular aspect of its claim. On the other hand, there are cases where a State may not, as it were, pocket compensation and walk away from an unresolved situation, for example one involving the life or liberty of individuals or the entitlement of a people to their territory or to self-determination. In particular, insofar as there are continuing obligations the performance of which are not simply matters for the two States concerned, those States may not be able to resolve the situation by a settlement, just as an injured State may not be able on its own to absolve the responsible State from its continuing obligations to a larger group of States or to the international community as a whole. (7) In the light of these limitations on the capacity of the injured State to elect the preferred form of reparation, article 43 does not set forth the right of election in an absolute form. Instead, it provides guidance to an injured State as to what sort of information it may include in its notification of the claim or in subsequent communications. Article 44. Admissibility of claims The responsibility of a State may not be invoked if: (a) the claim is not brought in accordance with any applicable rule relating to the nationality of claims; (b) the claim is one to which the rule of exhaustion of local remedies applies and any available and effective local remedy has not been exhausted. Commentary (1) The present articles are not concerned with questions of the jurisdiction of international courts and tribunals, or in general with the conditions for the admissibility of cases brought before such courts or tribunals. Rather, they define the conditions for establishing the international responsibility of a State and for the invocation of 679 As PCIJ noted in the Factory at Chorzów, Jurisdiction (see footnote 34 above), by that stage of the dispute, Germany was no longer seeking on behalf of the German companies concerned the return of the factory in question or of its contents (p. 17). 680 In the Passage through the Great Belt (Finland v. Denmark), Provisional Measures, Order of 29 July 1991, I.C.J. Reports 1991, p. 12, ICJ did not accept Denmark’s argument as to the impossibility of restitution if, on the merits, it was found that the construction of the bridge across the Great Belt would result in a violation of Denmark’s international obligations. For the terms of the eventual settlement, see M. Koskenniemi, “L’affaire du passage par le Grand-Belt”, Annuaire français de droit international, vol. 38 (1992), p. 905, at p. 940.