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| III. | The International Court of Justice |
| 2. | THE JURISDICTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE |
| 2.4. | Jurisdiction on the Basis of a Special Agreement |
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Application of the Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
(Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Yugoslavia),
Preliminary Objections, Judgment of 11 July 1996,
I.C.J. Reports 1996, p. 595
[pp. 618.619] 37. As the Court has indicated above (see paragraph 4), the Agent of Bosnia and Herzegovina filed in the Registry, on 31 March 1993, the text of a letter dated 8 June 1992 that was addressed to the President of the Arbitration Commission of the International Conference for Peace in Yugoslavia by Mr. Momir Bulatoviæ, President of the Republic of Montenegro, and Mr. Slobodan Miloseviæ, President of the Republic of Serbia. According to the English translation of that letter provided by Bosnia and Herzegovina, they expressed the following views, inter alia:
"FR Yugoslavia holds the view that all legal disputes which cannot be settled by agreement between FR Yugoslavia and the former Yugoslav republics should be taken to the International Court of Justice, as the principal judicial organ of the United Nations.
Accordingly, and in view of the fact that all the issues raised in your letter are of a legal nature, FR Yugoslavia proposes that in the event that agreement is not reached among the participants in the Conference, these questions should be adjudicated by the International Court of Justice, in accordance with its Statute."
The Court finds that, given the circumstances in which that letter was written and the declarations that ensued, it could not be taken as expressing an immediate commitment by the two Presidents, binding on Yugoslavia, to accept unconditionally the unilateral submission to the Court of a wide range of legal disputes. It thus confirms the provisional conclusion which it had reached in this regard in its Orders of 8 April (I.C.J. Reports 1993, pp. 16-18, paras. 27-32) and 13 September 1993 (I.C.J. Reports 1993, pp. 340-341, para. 32); besides, no fundamentally new argument has been presented to it on this matter since that time. It follows that the Court cannot find in that letter an additional basis of jurisdiction in the present case.
