Meanwhile, just to the south, Yugoslavia and Italy had agreed to end their stand-off over Trieste. In an agreement brokered by the Americans and the British in October 1954, the city of Trieste would remain with Italy while its surrounding hinterland, overwhelmingly populated by Slovenes, would revert to Yugoslavia. The Trieste accords, like so much else in these years, were facilitated by the understanding that they would be regarded as ‘provisional’:
