Office of the Historian

404. Letter From the Under Secretary of State (Dillon) to the Under Secretary of the Interior (Bennett)1

Washington, March 28, 1960.

Dear Mr. Secretary: Thank you for your letter of March 142 setting forth your views on how the United States Delegation should vote in certain contingencies apt to arise at the Law of the Sea Conference.

I think you will agree our Delegation will certainly vote in favor of every proposal actually put to a vote which offers protection to our fishery interests. Such action would carry out the letter and spirit of the existing instructions, which expressly provide that our fishery objective is to achieve maximum protection possible for United States fishery interests.

On the other hand, it is impossible to foresee the right answer to every tactical problem that is apt to arise at a Conference like this. I had felt, in view of paragraph 7 of the “Basic U.S. Position” paper, that it was generally recognized that it would be unwise and perhaps harmful to our fishery and security objectives to attempt to deal with tactical details in advance from here. I believe that this approach is basically sound and that it would therefore not be prudent to amend the position paper to impose binding instructions of this kind.

I share, however, your desire that every effort be made by the Delegation to achieve the maximum possible protection for our fishery interests, consistent with attainment of the agreed basic United States objective, and I am therefore sending a copy of your letter to Arthur Dean for his personal information so that he may have first hand the benefit of your views.

In this connection, you will be interested to know that on March 16 I had a long talk with the Canadian Chargé here (the Ambassador being absent in Canada) on the lines indicated in my letter to you of March 14.3

Sincerely yours,

Douglas Dillon4
  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 399.731/3–1460. Confidential. Drafted by Arneson on March 23 and cleared with Hager and U/FW.↩
  2. Document 396.↩
  3. For a memorandum of this conversation, see Document 397; Dillon’s letter of March 14 is in Department of State, Central Files, 399.731/3–1460.↩
  4. Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩