RESTRICTED
DSR 11C
matter was discussed at subsequent Council meetings and was
considered at the 16th and 18th sessions of the Assembly of
ICAO. The two interpretations identified by the Swedish
delegation and considered in the Council and Assembly were:
(a) Cabotage rights must be granted on a non-exclusive
basis, ie if one State is granted cabotage rights, any
other State may require to be granted the same privilege.
(b) States may grant cabotage rights to another State
exclusively, provided this is not done "specifically",
ie if it is not specified (ie provided by the agreement)
that these rights are exclusive.
A fuller exposition of these interpretations is in the Swedish
paper C-WP/4406 of 26/5/66 (attached as Annex A).
/44.
A third
RESTRICTED
DSR 11C
A third possible interpretation which should be considered
is that:
(c) States may not grant cabotage rights on an
exclusive basis, but that if they do they are in breach
of the Convention, ie it does not follow from a grant ·
of cabotage rights to one State that another State can
claim the same rights but only that that State can
assert that a breach has occureed.
It will be seen that this is only a variant of interpretation
(a) above. It would have the consequence that we would be in
being obliged to
breach without accord directly to an applicant or similar cabotage rights any entitiamant be
But it would be
an inherently unstable situation in that we obviously could not continue indefinitely granting limited cabotage in breach of the Convention. Therefore in the end we would be forced either to grant similar cabotage rights or to withdraw those already granted. Revertheless, since it would have a different Legal consequence from (a), this interpretation is worth bearing in mind during any discussion of the matter.
5.
Another possible interpretation,
interpretation (b),)
is that:
an extension of
(d) States may not grant cabotage rights on an
exclusive basis but that, provided always they do not
do this, cabotage rights may be granted' or refused in the normal way that rights are negotiated bilaterally.
This formulation has the great advantage that it is fully consistent with the philosophy of the Convention as it finally
C
RESTRICTED
DSR 11C
emerged, namely that rights are a matter of negotiation.
But
it can be run together with interpretation (b) and indeed fits well with interpretation (b). We could say that a state was precluded from binding itself to grant cabotage only to a particular country, precisely in order to let in that kind of open negotiation which was the underlying principle of this Convention as it ultimately emerged. To present it in this manner would also mean that it did not a rival to
constitute
interpretation (b), which the Swedes and others might want to support for historical reasons.
16. The Taxt
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.