Accede to UN Law of the Sea, Bush Officials Urge

WASHINGTON, DC, October 21, 2003 (ENS) - A senior Bush administration official is urging the Senate to approve U.S. accession to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), calling accession "the highest priority of United States international oceans policy."

In testimony today before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Assistant Secretary of State John Turner said that the convention provides "stable and predictable rules" for the uses of the oceans, and joining at this time would help promote U.S. efforts to preserve and manage ocean resources. The agreement is consistent with the United States' domestic fisheries laws and its international fisheries agreements and understandings, he said.

Assistant Secretary of State John Turner (Photo courtesy U.S. State Department)

Recently negotiated agreements based on UNCLOS, including a new convention on highly migratory species in the Western and Central Pacific, "can bring about an end to rampant overfishing in the years to come," he said.

Turner emphasized that the treaty enhances U.S. objectives as a major maritime power. UNCLOS provisions "preserve the right of the U.S. military to use the world's oceans to meet national security requirements and of commercial vessels to carry sea going cargoes," he said.

"The rule of law as embodied in the convention underpins U.S. leadership and security," he said.

Turner testified that the United States did not sign the convention in 1982 under President Ronald Reagan because of what it viewed as flaws in the regime for managing deep seabed mining.

A 1994 agreement to amend the convention "overcomes these flaws and meets the objections the United States and other industrialized countries have expressed," Turner said.

The United States did sign the Law of the Sea Convention on July 29, 1994, but on November 16, 1994, the convention entered into force without accession by the United States.

Deposits on the seabed contain copper, nickel, cobalt and manganese, gold, silver, copper and zinc.

Among U.S. objections to the seabed mining regime were that it was based on a controlled centrally planned economic model that preempted free-market private enterprise, and it did not give the United States and other states with major economic interests in seabed mining a voice in decision-making commensurate with their interests, according to a 1995 analysis by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a branch of the Library of Congress providing nonpartisan research reports to members of the House and Senate.

In particular, the United States was not guaranteed a seat on the Council, the decision making body governing the deep seabed regime, and the membership of that body would be dominated by developing countries, the CRS report states.

The United States has explored the seabed for minerals for years. Here a box coring device brings up manganese nodules from the tropical Pacific seabed in 1975 as part of a Deep Ocean Mining Environmental Studies project. (Photo courtesy NOAA)

The United States also objected to the requirement that seabed mining applicants would have to turn over one-half of their mine site to the Seabed Authority to be developed by its operating arm, the Enterprise, and transfer technology to the Enterprise or possibly to developing countries, Mielke reported.

In addition, he wrote, "the regime established production controls over certain minerals, discriminatory economic advantages to the Enterprise, and a system of annual payments that could severely reduce the commercial viability of seabed mining for market economy enterprises."

In separate testimony today, State Department legal adviser William H. Taft IV told the committee that the changes set forth in the 1994 agreement "meet our goal of guaranteed access by the U.S. industry to deep seabed minerals on the basis of reasonable terms and conditions."

Under the agreement the United States, and others with major economic interests at stake are accorded "decisive influence" over future decisions on possible deep seabed mining, Taft said.

The agreement guarantees a seat for the United States on the decision making body and requires financial decisions to be based on a consensus of major contributors, said Taft.

Turner told the committee that the convention "promotes the resource and environmental interests of the United States as a coastal State, including strong obligations to conserve and manage living marine resources and to protect the marine environment from all sources of pollution, combined with broad and exclusive jurisdiction over living and non-living resources off our coasts."

The convention's regime of access for marine scientific research will support the U.S. role as a leader in efforts to understand the oceans, including their role in global processes, Turner said. "Such research is critical for addressing problems associated with the use and protection of the marine environment."

The U.S. Commission on Oceans Policy, established by Congress in 2000 to make recommendations for a coordinated and comprehensive national ocean policy, has unanimously recommended that the United States immediately accede to UNCLOS.

The Commission's resolution says, "Time is of the essence if the United States is to maintain its leadership role in ocean and coastal activities. Critical national interests are at stake and the United States can only be a full participant in upcoming Convention activities if the country proceeds with accession expeditiously."

The Republic of Korea, India, France, Japan, Russia, China, Bulgaria, Cuba, the Czech Republic, Poland, and the Slovak Republic are currently contractors with the United Nations International Seabed Authority and are registered with that agency to explore for commercially exploitable mineral deposits in the deep seabed regions of the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Turner observed that 143 parties, including most major U.S. allies, have joined the convention, adding, "It is time for us to take this opportunity to demonstrate U.S. leadership on oceans issues by becoming a party to the Law of the Sea Convention."