The Helsinki Final Act, the Helsinki Accords, and the Helsinki Declaration are all common names for the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, signed at Helsinki, Finland, on August 1, 1975. The document was signed by nearly all the states of Europe (including the Holy See—the Vatican—but excluding Albania and Andorra) as well as by Canada, the United States (under Gerald Ford), and the Soviet Union (under Leonid Brezhnev)—a total of thirty-five countries. A lengthy document, spanning fifty-eight pages in the official English-language copy, the Helsinki Final Act covers a wide array of major political, economic, and social topics, being designed overall to secure peace and stability within and beyond Europe in the context of the cold war. Negotiations began in 1972 and were continued for two years during the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, which opened in Helsinki in July 1973 and shifted to Geneva, Switzerland, in September 1973. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Warsaw Pact, and nonaligned states were all represented, giving the act great international weight and significance. The interests of a group of nonparticipating Mediterranean states—Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia—are also recognized in the act, accompanied by statements on the importance of the Mediterranean region in general to the overarching goals of peace and security.