Transcript
DAVID BALTON: On April 20th, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, an eminent body created by Congress whose members were appointed by President Bush, issued its preliminary report after three years of study. In it the commission reaffirms the one recommendation they made in advance of issuing the report on a unanimous basis: that the United States should become party to the Law of the Sea Convention and should do so expeditiously.
The commission gives a number of sound reasons why the United States should become a party, but perhaps the most important reason they give is one they may not have intended. On page 23 of this preliminary report, they refer to the treaty in question as "the U.S. Law of the Sea Convention."
Now, some may think that's a typographical error. I think it's a Freudian slip, because in many ways this treaty is the United States Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Why do I say that? As negotiations on the convention were unfolding in the 1970s, the United States had two overriding goals:
The first was to secure for U.S. military and commercial vessels the right and ability to sail wherever they wanted to sail, free from undue interference of coastal states.
The second goal was to secure for the United States exclusive authority with respect to economic activities in all waters out to 200 miles off our shore and, with respect to the sea floor, out to the very edge of our wide continental margin, which extends even beyond 200 miles in a number of areas.
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