Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume XLI, Global Issues II

197. Information Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (Malone) to Secretary of State Shultz¹

Washington, July 13, 1983

SUBJECT

• Deep Seabed Mining Agreement

As you know, over the last few months we have been actively engaged in negotiating an agreement on deep seabed mining which could serve as an alternative to the LOS Convention seabed mining regime. At the most recent round of negotiations, held in London, July 6 and 7, and attended by the US, UK, France, FRG, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Japan, we reached agreement in principle on all important outstanding questions.² The issues which remain are largely technical in character and, I believe, can be dealt with satisfactorily.

We have made a special effort to negotiate our differences with Japan. Bilateral talks were held in Tokyo in June and, as a result, we appear to have settled our outstanding bilateral issues relating to the seabed mining agreement.³

The next and, we hope, final, substantive meeting is scheduled to take place at the end of September in Paris.⁴ We hope to be able to sign the agreement after a technical review following the Paris meeting.

Concurrently, the private seabed mining companies have been negotiating a resolution of overlapping seabed mine sites. Negotiations have been successfully concluded among the US and European-led consortia, and negotiations between the US-European consortia and the Japanese have begun. The initial results are encouraging. There seems to be a good chance that the consortia will sign an arbitration agreement with the Japanese in early September and, possibly, reach final resolution of conflicts by the middle of December.

Most of the countries with which we have been negotiating have made no decision yet on whether to sign a seabed mining agreement. That decision will have to be made at high political levels, and the issue may be controversial. The industrialized countries, particularly those which have signed the LOS Convention, do not want to be criticized for acting in bad faith by the LDC’s and the Soviet Bloc.

The Japanese have told us they will not consider signing a government-to-government seabed mining agreement until the negotiations between the US-European consortia and the Japanese consortium are successfully completed, and that if the U.S. and other countries go ahead and sign the agreement without them, the Japanese would be “forced”, for domestic political reasons, to criticize the agreement publicly, thus excluding Japan from the agreement. As a result, there is a close link between the government and the private sector negotiations.

In the meantime, the Law of the Sea Preparatory Commission will meet again in Kingston for a four-week session beginning in August, although most countries objected to Kingston as a site.⁵ We do not expect that any substantial progress will be made at that session.

1. Source: Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, P830132–2350. Confidential. Sent through Schneider. Drafted by Eskin on July 12 and cleared in OES/O, L/OES, EB/ICD, EA/RA, and EUR/RPE.
2. In telegram 193251 to multiple recipients, July 12, the Department provided a summary of the consultations on July 6–7. (Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, D830395–0731)
3. In telegram 12403 from Tokyo, June 30, the Embassy provided a summary of the seabed mining consultations with Japan. (Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, D830372–0682)
4. In telegram 294888 to multiple recipients, October 15, the Department summarized seabed mining negotiations, including the talks in Paris. (Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, D830600–0310)
5. In telegram 7814 from Kingston, August 16, the Embassy announced that the Preparatory Commission had begun. (Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, D830470–0759)