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Without any lead from the Military Commission, the Bulgarian Commission had practically no choice but to agree with the Council of Foreign Ministers that the present frontier line remain unchanged. The New Zealand delegation had supported the original Greek amendment, with its accompanying resolution. It offered an amendment to the latter which was adopted, and which aimed at permitting consideration of the possibility of giving some measure of security by means not involving the cession of territory— e.g., by the establishment of a •demilitarized zone. This aspect was apparently never discussed by the Military Commission. Another discussion of note occurred on a United Kingdom proposal to insert a new Article 2a, designed specifically to alleviate the sufferings of the Jews in Eastern Europe by imposing a general obligation on the Bulgarian Government to respect the principle of non-discrimination between Bulgarian nationals. A similar article had been accepted by the Roumanian and Hungarian Commissions, where it had been opposed by the U.S.S.R. delegation. Similar opposition in this Commission was put forward by the U.S.S.R., first on the procedural grounds that the U.K. proposal had not been submitted by the due date —20 August —and, second, on grounds of substance that both Articles 2 and 3 contained similar and adequate safeguards against racial and religious discrimination, and, moreover, that Bulgarian legislation had already adopted and put into practice the principles of the proposal. The majority of the Commission, including New Zealand, however, thought it useful to confirm an existing juridical situation by introducing a special contractual obligation into the body of. the treaty. A debate also took place on the adoption of Article 34, which relates to the settlement of disputes concerning the interpretation or execution of the treaty. Two drafts of this article had been submitted for consideration by the Commission, one by the United Kingdom and U.S.A., the other by U.S.S.R. The point of difference in these drafts concerned the question of the submission of persistent disputes to the International Court of Justice after the failure of initial consideration by the three Heads of Missions and their failure to agree. The U.S.S.R. draft was advanced because that State had not yet recognized as obligatory the jurisdiction of the International Court. A simple majority of the Commission, 8 against 5, preferred the U.K. and U.S.A. solution as leading eventually to the solution of a dispute by an impartial tribunal. Under the procedure proposed by the Soviet a dispute could continue indefinitely. As the necessary two-thirds majority was not obtained on either of these last two proposals no recommendation could be submitted by the Commission to the Plenary Conference.

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