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this because they related to the particular.case of
However,
adjacent territory. There is no obvious ground of principle why mutual grant of cabotage rights between neighbours should be regarded differently from grants involving States further removed from one another. Nor is it clear why the UK and USA thought the wording of section 4 of Article I would. not impose the prohibition the French feared, unless it was that they favoured an interpretation other than (a) above.
16. It should be noted that there are other traces of an
inclination to allow cabotage between contiguous countries at the, Conference at that time. Thus at p 24 in paragraph 66. BC-WP/4460 Menere is a reference to the interpretation as limited to
adjacent countries. In the application of rules concerning non-discriminatory and other agreements there are a number of exceptions which are recognised for adjacent territories, such as frontier zone privileges in customs matters and voisinage agreements in fisheries. Although there is no logic in distinguishing between adjacent and non-adjacent cabotage it cannot be excluded that the interpretation would be held to be limited to the case of adjacent cabotage traffic: Furthermore, formally the interpretation was in fact given in connection with a different Convention from that which is
under interpretation in this note, even though it may be possible to show that the two texts are historically and by content so similar that the interpretation of the second is
valid for the first. Therefore it would be unwise to place Soo much weight on the interpretation concerning French and Belgian cobotage in order to justify the grant to,China of rights on the cabotage route Hong Kong-London.
19. In general the preparatory work does not shed any very helpful light on the interpretation of this phrase. As far
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