13 [i]f, within a period of three months from the date of the transmittal of the report of the Commission to the states concerned, the matter has not either been settled or submitted by the Commission or by the state concerned to the Court and its jurisdiction accepted, the Commission may, by the vote of an absolute majority of its members, set forth its opinion and conclusions concerning the question submitted for its consideration. (emphasis added) 33) Trinidad and Tobago maintained that the Confidential Report No. 128/99, issued pursuant to Article 50 of the Convention, was submitted to the State on November 22, 1999. Consequently, the three-month time period stipulated in Article 51(1) expired on February 22, 2000, and the Court should therefore have accepted jurisdiction on the matter before that date. However, the State received notification that the Court had “accepted jurisdiction” on April 14, 2000. Arguments of the Commission 34) The Commission stated that the phrase “its jurisdiction accepted” in Article 51(1) of the Convention cannot be interpreted so as to require the Court to make an express act of acceptance of jurisdiction in each application, much less to require it to do so within the three-month period prescribed in the article. 35) The Commission also argued that the interpretation of Article 51(1) of the Convention advocated by the State would not accord with the ordinary meaning of the terms of the provision in their context, or with the object and purpose of the Convention. It would be inconsistent with other provisions of the Convention, the Court’s Statute, and the Court’s procedure and jurisprudence. 36) It added that the State’s interpretation of Article 51(1) of the Convention would necessarily require the Court to make a determination as to whether it has jurisdiction to entertain a case within the same three-month period prescribed for the Commission or a State to submit a matter to the Court. Such an interpretation is plainly not viable, as it would inevitably provide parties with insufficient time to raise preliminary objections, for a hearing on preliminary issues, or for the Court to make a determination respecting its jurisdiction in a given case. As a consequence, the Court would lose jurisdiction in most, if not all, of the cases submitted to it. Such an interpretation of Article 51(1) would be irrational in the context of the Convention as a whole, and is plainly contrary to the object and purpose of the Convention. 37) Interpreting Article 51(1) as speaking to the acceptance by the State of the Court’s compulsory jurisdiction under Article 62 of the Convention, on the other hand, is consistent with the Convention’s object and purpose, and is reinforced by it, the Court’s Statute, and the procedure and jurisprudence of the Court. Article 61 of the Convention, for example, expressly contains instructions to comply with Articles 48 to 50, but not Article 51, as a precondition for the Court to hear a case. Similarly, Article 2 of the Statute defines the Court’s compulsory jurisdiction in terms of Articles 61, 62, and 63, but not Article 51, of the Convention. 38) Further, the Commission indicated that Article 36 of the Court’s Rules of Procedure provides a period of two months from the date of notification of an application for parties to raise preliminary objections, and a further thirty days for the submission of any additional written briefs on the preliminary objections. The timing of this process is clearly incompatible with an interpretation of Article 51(1) that would require preliminary objections to be filed within three months of the date