Last April, Envirotest requested a settlement by arbitration, a solution unacceptable to Mr. Kozlowski.

An effort to hold a congress was made by the governments of Chile and Colombia in 1880, "to the end that the settlement by arbitration of each and every international controversy should become a principle of American public law".

"We therefore conclude that an agreement to arbitrate antitrust issues is not 'an agreement within the meaning of' ... the Convention because such an agreement does not concern 'a subject matter capable of settlement by arbitration'", he concluded."

"The precise question we ask," he wrote, "is whether a matter that has been barred by unanimous judicial precedent for a decade and a half from resolution by arbitration, because of a multiplicity of solid reasons that lose no pertinence or weight in an international context, is a matter 'capable of settlement by arbitration'".