39. Memorandum for the Record1 2

SUBJECT:

  • Meeting on Law of the Sea

PARTICIPANTS:

  • The Secretary
  • Undersecretary Maw
  • Mr. Lord
  • Mr. Aldrich
  • Ambassador Brewster
  • Mr. Katz
  • Mr. Ahern
  • Mr. Blaney
  • Mr. Newlin (notetaker)

Secretary: I’ve seen conferences screwed up before, but this is the worst in the annals of diplomacy. What am I supposed to be doing September 1?

Lord: You have to go. There are important domestic reasons. You have two options. You have to decide whether to make a major effort across the board or a more moderate effort on some issues.

Secretary: If I understand correctly, the delegation wants to give away everything in Committees 2 and 3 where we have some flexibility.

Maw: We don’t have all that much we need to offer in Committees 2 and 3. It looks as if we might be able to conclude that this week.

Secretary: What can we do in Committee 1?

Maw: We have to address the major issues. The access question, finance, and how to make the Enterprise viable.

Secretary: Well, with the Enterprise, that we can do.

Maw: We need interagency agreement.

Katz: Particularly, we have to get Treasury.

[Page 2]

Secretary: Is Simon in town?

Maw: He is on a boat somewhere. He’ll be back Saturday. Parsky is available.

Lord: You have to have interagency Agreement before you go up to New York.

Secretary: What does making the Enterprise viable really mean?

Katz: We have to agree to put the Enterprise in business. We have to agree on a financial plan and how to provide the technology to make it viable.

Secretary: What is the Learson idea? The one where we go ahead with some four companies?

Katz: It would be essentially a joint operation. You give the Enterprise the first crack at a site. The problem is the companies would have to wait until the Enterprise had begun mining before they could move ahead.

Secretary: That’s absurd. You wouldn’t be able to sell it.

Blaney: The idea was really that they could go ahead simultaneously.

Katz: It amounts to the same thing. Until the Enterprise is in business, the companies can’t go ahead. What we want to do is make the Enterprise operational, but we can do it by providing the finance and letting them contract for the managerial skills and equipment. There are a number of approaches we could use. You could have a system based on complaint proceedings. You would need thresholds for complaints. If one state became dominant, and the complaint were made, one might have to wait one, two or three years to give the others a chance to catch up. From our point of view, what you would need would be specific criteria on which complaints could be based.

Secretary: What if they complained after only one year?

[Page 3]

Katz: That’s why you need the threshold. It could be based on either a percent of the site or a percent of the area.

Maw: Or a percent of world production.

Katz: Stay away from that.

Maw: This is where they take you.

Secretary: Would the Treasury agree to that?

Katz: We haven’t discussed it. It would go down hard, but I think we could sell it if the access were worked out.

Lord: Can we raise this in New York?

Katz: We have to decide whether we are prepared to meet their concerns on the Enterprise and on the monopoly provisions.

Maw: Last week a trend seemed to be developing towards putting together a knowledgeable small group. We can’t do that unless we are prepared to participate on a very sophisticated level ourselves.

Secretary: Evensen told me he had an idea, and he wants to discuss it with me alone.

Maw: I know what his ideas are. They are good. You should talk to Amerasinghe on Wednesday.

Secretary: What is it, a secret?

Maw: Yes. It involves having Amerasinghe appoint four or five key people to work on Committee 1. Let them go off and work independently. In the meantime, we will get Committees 2, 3 and decision making where we want them. Then we’d be home.

Secretary: How about Committee 1?

Maw: The small group in the meantime would be working on Committee 1, they’d come back with something that we could either take or leave.

[Page 4]

Secretary: What am I supposed to do? I may not be there the whole day of the 2nd. I may go to Europe on the third. The last time I was only there for two-thirds of the day and I seemed to see all the people.

Maw: You want to see Amerasinghe. You want to have a private session with Evensen. That shouldn’t be conspicuous.

Secretary: Isn’t Rusk the President of the Advisory Group? Will he be there?

Brewster: Jack Stevenson is now the head.

Maw: I don’t think so. I don’t think he can travel.

Secretary: He is seeing me on Friday. Once he said that if I spent several days up there, he would be able to spend several days.

Maw: I think Rusk can be more help to you on the home front.

Katz: He can turn this Carter stuff off.

Maw: That’s John Norton Moore going around up there spreading the word that things will be easier under Carter.

Secretary: Is it reasonable to invite these foreign ministers?

Maw: No. Simply report to them that you are going. Now with Kenyatta and Echeverria we have a different problem. We have three trouble spots, Kenya, Mexico and Peru. The telegrams from you to Kenyatta and Echeverria ought to handle Kenya and Mexico. I will be going down to Peru on Tuesday and will talk to de la Puente. What we need to do now, is get agreement from the other agencies on financing the Enterprise the viability of the Enterprise, and something on quotas. In return, we want to get a clear situation on access.

Lord: Who do we lay this out to? Should it be done in a multilateral group, or bilaterally?

[Page 5]

Maw: It should be done to the key country chairmen.

Secretary: Who are they?

Maw: Well, Jagota of India, for one.

Secretary: How about [less than 1 line not declassified] the Cameroon?

Maw: It is important to say it to him. He is big was the African group and he is more on our side than against.

Secretary: It’s just a little land-locked country, with just a little access to the sea.

Maw: You are committed to going. If the conference is in trouble, we don’t want them to be able to say we didn’t do our part. It’s really a damage limiting operation.

Secretary: It would be no failure if we got Committees 2 and 3 lined up, and the procedures lined up for Committee 1. Then we wouldn’t have to apologize.

Maw: Sincerely, I think Evensen’s idea is the best.

Secretary: Why doesn’t someone set up a meeting between me and Evensen? Who would appoint the four or five people?

Maw: Amerasinghe.

Secretary: Whenever I begin to participate, the Delegation doesn’t like it.

Lord: Would this be a secret group? Are we going to get into that again?

Secretary: Who would we put on from our side?

Maw: I have someone in mind. He is good.

Secretary: Who?

Maw: Can I hold that for now?

Secretary: Have we had the exchanges with the Russians we were going to have?

[Page 6]

Maw: Yes. Learson had lunch. The Russians showed more flexibility then we did. Learson has gone about as far as he can go. The Russians have real problems with scientific research. They are in favor of a consent regime. The French also have big problems here. There is a letter on this. They could pull the rug out from all our military installations on the continental shelf.

Secretary: I haven’t seen any letter from the French.

Brewster: It will be coming up this afternoon. We are getting a Defense clearance on it.

Secretary: For my education, do I understand that the letter is coming up for my signature, and Defense sees it before I do?

Brewster: It was the Delegation that learned of the French problem. Defense was there. We are now sending you a staff study recommending a Presidential message to Giscard.

Lord: I have serious doubts if we want to involve the President in this.

Secretary: Well I certainly don’t want to be involved prematurely. I see we have Defense and the Embassy in Paris on board before me. How about the White House, Scowcroft, do we have his opinion?

Brewster: They are aware of it.

Secretary: Who is aware of it at the White House? I dont want to be unpleasant about this, but the next time a message to me is cleared outside of this building, there is going to be blood on the floor. At this point I won’t approve it, no matter what it says. It’s insanity that the Delegation goes to the Embassy Paris, Defense and the White House, and then to me.

Maw: The issue surfaced at a meeting in New York, where Defense was present.

Secretary: Don’t you think it is odd that all these people would know before me?

[Page 7]

Maw: Nothing is cleared out to go yet. I was raising hell this morning. We have to be able to move fast on these things.

Secretary: It will not happen again. Why the hell does the goddam Embassy in Paris have to know?

Slane: We wanted their opinion as to what was behind the French position.

Secretary: The Embassy doesn’t know. If you want to handle this with intelligence, send a private message to Giscard explaining what our position is. Now it will leak, sure as the day is long.

Maw: They must know about the SOSUS.

Secretary: I don’t know, that is very highly classified. This whole negotiation is a mess, with a lot of middle-level bureaucrats trying to show their capitals how bright they are. When one self-serving idiot deals with another middle-level bureaucrat, you don’t get anywhere. You can bet your bottom dollar the French have some rationale, or they wouldn’t have taken this position. You certainly won’t get out of this mess with another message cleared with middle-level bureaucrats all over the damn place. The Embassy in Paris has probably told the Elysee that a Presidential message is coming. Either the Embassy or the Delegation has told them. Everybody likes to show that they have an in with the President.

Brewster: Neither the Delegation or the Embassy know

Secretary: You people mess around for five days when you know your best contacts with the French are either the President or me.

Aldrich: What we have to do it get the French to hold off until we can get our people over to talk to them.

Secretary: This letter here is certainly not the way to do it. You have to send somebody to brief them. It might be shocking to the bureaucracy to know that we send dozens of letters to Giscard without anybody knowing it. We need a very brief letter indicating [Page 8] that very sensitive military projects are involved, and that we would like to explain them to the French. Could Giscard designate somebody to receive this briefing.

Lord: The President certainly doesn’t need to send something like that.

Secretary: It should go from ma to Poncet. First say that it is a very delicate matter, we want to send a briefer, could they please hold up announcing their position until we have had an opportunity to brief them. This doesn’t need a ten page letter. I would cut it down to one paragraph. You want to say, we understand your position, but significant military interests are involved. I won’t go into the history of it now, can we send a briefing officer. This letter here doesn’t do that.

Maw: Is this the final version of the letter?

Brewster: I don’t know which version you have. We’ll sort that out later.

Secretary: Could we do that then. What we need is a short letter to Poncet. Go ahead and send the letter to Kenyatta but not the Echeverria letter. I want to think about that.

Lord: Shall we tell the Delegation to go ahead and negotiate on Committees 2 and 3 before you get there?

Secretary: What do you think?

Lord: Yes, we can do that. Now, we are going to have to get the interagency clearances.

Secretary: Who is here who can do that?

Maw: I can tell the Delegation to go ahead on Committee 1 and 2.

Lord: We can do the interagency clearance here on Friday.

Maw: The other agency people on the Delegation are mad because they don’t believe they are being fully consulted.

[Page 9]

Lord: Before having a full meeting, it would be good for you to meet with two or three key cabinet people, so we won’t (let shot down in the full meeting.

Secretary: Who?

Lord: Simon, Richardson, Kleppe and Scowcroft.

Secretary: Simon and Scowcroft aren’t here.

Maw: Kleppe is in left field.

Secretary: What do they want?

Maw: They want a complete consent regime. No one in our water without our consent.

Lord: We’re going to need one cosmetic meeting of the Under Secretary’s Committee, but it ought to be proceeded by a meeting with a smaller number of people to get things in order. For that we need Simon, Richardson, Kleppe, Scowcroft, and also Rumsfeld.

Maw: Parsky’s trying to find out if Simon is available. Simon is supposed to call him when he hits port.

Katz: We can deal with Parsky.

Secretary: You go ahead and deal with him first.

Maw: Go ahead and set this up for Monday.

Secretary: We need the Under Secretary Committee before Monday. If we have it on Monday, and I go up Tuesday, and we’ve had trouble with the Under Secretary Committee, then we have a problem.

Blaney: If you can get Win’s key people to agree on a package first, then we don’t have so much of a problem.

Secretary: Set up a meeting for 45 minutes tomorrow, or at latest, the next day.

Lord: On the messages to the Foreign Ministers, you can essentially send the message we were going to send to the Tab 2 ministers.

[Page 10]

Secretary: Yes. Tell them that I’m only going to be here or such a short time, and I’m not asking them to be there, but 1 would be delighted if they were able to make it.

Maw: When should we have the Under Secretary’s mooting?

Secretary: Friday.

  1. Source: National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, P860084–2123. Secret; Nodis. The meeting took place in the Secretary’s Conference Room. Paul Engo of the Republic of Cameroon chaired the First Committee of UNCLOS III.
  2. Kissinger discussed with Department of State officials how best to utilize his early September appearance at the August–September, 1976 (New York) UNCLOS III session.