On 1 July 1999, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea rendered its first judgment on the merits in the M/V "Saiga" (No.2) case (St. Vincent and the Grenadines v. Guinea)1, thereby completing the settlement of a dispute which began with the M/V "Saiga" case (hereinafter the Saiga No.1)2 in the form of an application for prompt release under Article 292 of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (the Convention). Unlike the decision in the Saiga No.1, which evidenced a deeply split Tribunal, the judgment on the merits was by an overwhelming majority of 18 to 2 on all but two paragraphs of the dispositif.3