I am grateful to the organizers of this conference for inviting me to speak on the applicability to the State of Palestine of the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States. While I have been involved with the Palestinian cause for a quarter of a century, I must confess that I was not previously aware of the Montevideo Convention. However, I now know that it was a pioneering multinational treaty addressing the vexing question, "What is a state?" under international law and that it remains relevant, not simply within the Western Hemisphere and among its state signatories, but also beyond, including with respect to Palestine.

The convention was signed in this city on December 26, 1933, by all the Spanish-speaking states of this hemisphere except Bolivia, as well as by Brazil, Haiti and the United States of America. At the Seventh International Conference of American States, which gave birth to the convention, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared his "Good Neighbor Policy," which promised a less aggressive American approach to inter-American relations, and this more respectful and egalitarian spirit in state-to-state relations is reflected in the provisions of the convention.

Article 1 of the convention sets the following agreed criteria for a state to exist under international law:

The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.

In this context, it is important to recognize the distinction between the existence of a state and the diplomatic recognition of a state by other states. Article 3 of the convention specifically states:

The political existence of the state is independent of recognition by other states. Even before recognition the state has the right to defend its integrity and independence, to provide for its conservation and prosperity, and consequently to organize itself as it sees fit, to legislate upon its interests, to administer its services, and to define the jurisdiction and competence of its courts.

Indeed, diplomatic recognition is a fundamentally political issue. No state can be compelled to recognize another state or prevented from doing so. The United States of America provides extreme examples, in both directions, of the absolute discretion of states to grant or refuse recognition. For 30 years, the United States refused to recognize the People's Republic of China, whose existence was scarcely in doubt. On the other hand, during the 50 years prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States continued to recognize the three Baltic states, which had been effectively absorbed into the USSR by the end of World War II. The prewar flags of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania continued to fly at fully accredited embassies in Washington.