9. Minutes of the Acting Secretary of State’s Staff Meeting, Washington, June 17, 1974, 3 p.m.1 2
THE ACTING SECRETARY’S ANALYTICAL STAFF MEETING
MONDAY, JUNE 17,
1974—3:00 P.M.
SECRETARY’S CONFERENCE ROOM
- PRESENT:
- THE ACTING SECRETARY—MR. SISCO
- Ambassador Brown
- Ambassador McCloskey
- Ambassador Stevenson
- Mr. Aldrich
- Mr. Springsteen
- Mr. Ingersoll
- Mr. Stabler
- Mr. Easum
- Mr. Sober
- Mr. Buffum
- Mr. Pollack
- Mr. Vest
- Mr. King
- Governor Holton
- Mr. Blake
- Mr. Lewis
- Mr. Blaney
- Mr. Grove
- Mr. Moore
- Mr. Blow
- Mr. McIntyre
- Mr. Sober
[Omitted is material unrelated to Moore’s discussion of Pacific archipelagos.]
[Page 2]There have been two issues particularly, sub-issues, within the straits negotiation, that if we could resolve would make it a great deal easier to achieve our objectives. One of those is the archipelago problem; the states such as Indonesia, the Philippines and Fiji, which have opposed the notion of transit through straits, largely because they are archipelagos, which itself includes a large number of straits used for international navigation. Indonesia is the best example of that, with Lombok and Sunda, and a number of other straits through the archipelago, as well as Molucca, which of course is outside the archipelago, but also a very vital strait.
We have felt that if we could work out an accommodation within the multilateral setting with the [Page 3] archipelago states, so that we would agree to support a reasonable archipelago principle in return for the kind of transit through the archipelago which we needed, and in return for support on their part for the straits position of the United States, that we would be able to swing one of the major groups in opposition over to support, and it would be a very major boost to achieving our straits objective.
As a result, we have been engaged in active negotiation with Indonesia and the Philippines primarily, but Fiji, because it has some influence within this archipelago group over the others. We have gone to Jakarta with a team about four weeks. We then held a second round of discussions here in Washington about two weeks ago, followed by a visit to Manila and discussions in New York with the representatives of Fiji, all of this being carefully coordinated with the other members of the Group of Five, so that at every stage they knew basically what we were doing and they knew the kind of response we were getting from the other archipelago states.
Basically we have told them that we are willing to accept the archipelago principle and work actively to include a chapter in the convention on this, if they will agree, one, to a definition reasonably limiting the concept [Page 4] to basically five or six states including Indonesia, the Philippines, Fiji; secondly, that they would permit unimpeded transit through archipelago sea lanes, that would be broad sea lanes through the archipelagos, including submerged transit, overflight, and no requirement of notification for the transit through the archipelago.
MR. SISCO: What you are really saying is, when you talk about the principle that is involved here — what you really trying to do is to get them to accept our basic position, really, of unimpeded transfer through and over.
MR. MOORE: Exactly. And it is perfectly consistent—if they accept it through the archipelago, for them to accept it in straits and be willing to work for it there as well.
[Omitted is material unrelated to Moore’s discussion of Pacific archipelagos.]