04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly the world at large, including the Applicant, its intention effectively to terminate these tests. It was bound to assume that other States might take note of these statements and rely on their being effective. The validity of these statements and their legal consequences must be considered within the general framework of the security of international intercourse, and the confidence and trust which are so essential in the relations among States. It is from the actual substance of these statements, and from the circumstances attending their making, that the legal implications of the unilateral act must be deduced. The objects of these statements are clear and they were addressed to the international community as a whole, and the Court holds that they constitute an undertaking possessing legal effect. The Court considers *270 that the President of the Republic, in deciding upon the effective cessation of atmospheric tests, gave an undertaking to the international community to which his words were addressed. x x x (Emphasis and underscoring supplied) As gathered from the above-quoted ruling of the ICJ, public statements of a state representative may be construed as a unilateral declaration only when the following conditions are present: the statements were clearly addressed to the international community, the state intended to be bound to that community by its statements, and that not to give legal effect to those statements would be detrimental to the security of international intercourse. Plainly, unilateral declarations arise only in peculiar circumstances. The limited applicability of the Nuclear Tests Case ruling was recognized in a later case decided by the ICJ entitled Burkina Faso v. Mali,[183] also known as the Case Concerning the Frontier Dispute. The public declaration subject of that case was a statement made by the President of Mali, in an interview by a foreign press agency, that Mali would abide by the decision to be issued by a commission of the Organization of African Unity on a frontier dispute then pending between Mali and Burkina Faso. Unlike in the Nuclear Tests Case, the ICJ held that the statement of Mali's President was not a unilateral act with legal implications. It clarified that its ruling in the Nuclear Tests case rested on the peculiar circumstances surrounding the French declaration subject thereof, to wit: 40.In order to assess the intentions of the author of a unilateral act, account must be taken of all the factual circumstances in which the act occurred. For example, in the Nuclear Tests cases, the Court took the view that since the applicant States were not the only ones concerned at the possible continuance of atmospheric testing by the French Government, that Government's unilateral declarations had `conveyed to the world at large, including the Applicant, its intention effectively to terminate these tests` (I.C.J. Reports 1974, p. 269, para. 51; p. 474, para. 53). In the particular circumstances of those cases, the French Government could not express an intention to be bound otherwise than by unilateral declarations. It is elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/47263 49/203