(ii) Adoption of a revised Protocol and opening of the Protocol for signature by all States Members of the United Nations and by non-Member States invited to attend the first Conference of Plenipotentiaries. Invitations to the conference were sent to all states which attended the first conference. The Secretary-General prepared for the conference a memorandum on the Draft Protocol 4 5 Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, Draft Rules of Procedure, and some other 6 memoranda. The conference met in New York from September 13 to September 23, 1954, and was attended by representatives of 27 states: five other states were represented by observers. The states are listed in the Final Act of the conference. 7 The conference worked in the main in full sessions. In addition, it appointed a Drafting 8 Committee on the definition of “Stateless Persons”, an Ad Hoc Committee to present proposals 9 concerning the question of travel documents and a Style Committee which was concerned not 10 only with the style but also proposed extensive changes in some of the articles (Arts. 1 and 35). Various delegations submitted proposals and amendments which appear as documents E/CONF.17/L.1 to L.10); L.12 to L.14; L.16 to L.21; L.25 to L.28. As we have seen, the conference was called to revise the Draft Protocol which provided for the mutatis mutandis application of a number of provisions of the Refugee Convention to Stateless Persons. It soon became clear that such a Protocol would hardly be an appropriate document. The drafters of the Protocol had thought of it as an appendix to the Refugee Convention rather than as an independent document and expected that both the Convention and the Protocol would be approved and opened for signature at the same time, and that both would be adopted by the same states. In such case there would be no need to repeat the same provisions twice. However, as mentioned, the first Conference of Plenipotentiaries adopted only the Refugee Convention and did not deal with the Protocol. It therefore appeared quite possible that the Parties to the Refugee Convention and to the document on stateless persons might be different states; in particular, some parties to the stateless persons agreement might not be parties to the Refugee Convention. This would create an awkward situation because it would force non-parties to the Refugee Convention which accepted the Draft Protocol to apply provisions which they had not adopted and might not have wanted to. Another expectation by the drafters of the Protocol was that the States would accord to both groups the same rights, except insofar as the basic difference between them might result in certain insignificant deviations - this was the essence of the reference to mutatis mutandis application of the provisions of the Refugee Convention. However, as will be seen from the discussion of the various articles of the Convention, many of the participants desired deviations from the text of the Refugee Convention, changes which could not be justified by a mutatis mutandis application. As will be seen, certain articles were substantially changed. The third point was that the expression mutatis mutandis, while common in practice, leaves considerable leeway in application, which would mean that the provisions of the Refugee Convention would in practice have different meanings in different states, so that there would be no uniformity in application - in effect, there would be as many agreements as there were parties 11 to the document. Finally, the draft Protocol was, as an independent document, incomplete 4 E/CONF.17/3. 5 E/CONF.17/2 6 E/CONF.17/4 plus addendum. 7 The deliberations of the full Conference appear in Summary Records (SR) 1-15. 8 The report appears as Doc. E/CONF.17/L.6 9 Its report appears as Doc. E/CONF.17/L.15. 10 The report appears as Doc. E/CONF.17/L.22, 23 and 24 (plus two addenda). 11 See on this point the World Jewish Congress submission E/CONF.17/NGO/1.