Office of the Historian

125. Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (Malone) to the Executive Secretary of the Department of State (Bremer)1

Washington, July 11, 1981

SUBJECT

  • The July 8 IG Meeting on Law of the Sea

Ted Kronmiller chaired a meeting of the Law of the Sea IG on July 8. The object was to establish initial guidelines for the preparation of instructions for the UNCLOS Session beginning August 2.2

Agreement was reached on the following general points:

—The Delegation should preserve the widest possible range of options from which the President may choose at the conclusion of the policy review this fall. This means that formalization of the current text or adoption of amendments to it running counter to U.S. interests should be prevented and that the Delegation should not commit or appear to commit the good faith of the United States.

—The Delegation should obtain the most accurate and complete assessment possible of the negotiability of changes in the current text. [Page 375] A list of such changes was floated in the IG. The list largely tracked earlier testimony by myself before Congress.3

The group discussed the advisability of authorizing the Delegation to offer, if appropriate, a “positive alternative” (free market model) seabed mining regime that would substitute entirely for the current text. The JCS representative expressed personal doubts about the wisdom of this approach, while Mr. Kronmiller defended it. There was no dissent, expressed as an agency position, to the notion of providing the proposed authority.

Finally, there was discussion of the question of how to handle the non-seabeds texts (navigation, coastal State rights, marine scientific research, etc.). The pros and cons of asking for leaving the texts unchanged, were analyzed. It was agreed that, generally, these issues should be avoided in the Conference proceedings in Geneva, though relatively discrete matters might be discussed informally in small groups. The reasoning was that the political traffic might bear no more than the detailed discussion of U.S. concerns regarding seabeds. The risks of damage to non-seabeds interests from a U.S. initiative regarding them in the formal Conference process was regarded as excessive.

A first draft of instructions to the Delegation is being prepared based on the meeting, and should be ready for circulation by COB Friday, July 10.4

  1. Source: Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, P810105–2187. Secret. Drafted by Meyer and cleared by Kronmiller.↩
  2. See footnote 2, Document 124.↩
  3. Malone testified before the House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee on April 28, 1981. For the text of his statement, see Department of State, Bulletin, July 1981, pp. 48–51.↩
  4. See Document 126.↩