We were unable to support the decision in this case on the question of costs for two reasons.

First, the two States parties to the dispute requested the Tribunal to award costs to the successful party. They included their joint request in their Agreement of February 1998. They repeated it individually at the time of making their respective final submissions, in which each party sought recovery of its costs against the other. The parties are in agreement that the successful party should be awarded its costs and, at the request of the Tribunal, each has submitted invoices and accounts which have been duly examined.

In this connection, we recall that, from the outset of the work of the Permanent Court of International Justice, it was understood that the terms of Article 64 of its Statute (comparable to article 34 of the Tribunal’s Statute) did not exclude the possibility that a division of the costs between the parties could be ordered pursuant to an agreement between them. The Sub-Committee of the Third Committee of the Assembly of the League of Nations, in reporting on its work in preparation for the adoption by the Assembly of the Statute of the Permanent Court, stated: “The Sub-Committee unanimously recognises that the terms of [Article 64] do not prevent division of the costs between the Parties in accordance with an agreement between them.” (League of Nations, Records of the First Assembly, Meetings of the Committees, I, p. 537, Geneva, 1920).