1574 



to press the treaty was awaiting approval by the U.S. Senate of its 

 ratification. (Tlie treaty was subsequently ratified.) 



U.S. Involvement in the Case 



Tiie Doumani analysis included a statement of the problem, a 

 description of the U.S. and U.N. institutions created to deal with it, 

 an account of problems up to July 1971, and an assessment of pros- 

 pects for resolution of the problem thereafter. 



Thus, in June 1966 the Marine Resources and Engineering Develop- 

 ment Act, Public Law 89-454, was passed by the C^ongress. It es- 

 tablished ". . . policies and objectives for the U.S. effort to develop 

 the Nation's marine resources" and ". . . for the establishment of 

 a National Council on Marine Resources and Engineering Develop- 

 ment. . . ." that ". . . represented a wide-ranging mandate over the 

 total national program in oceanography." "^ This Council was to make 

 a comprehensive investigation and study of all aspects of marine 

 science in order to recommend an overall plan for an adecpiate national 

 oceanographic program that will meet the present and future national 

 needs. One panel of the Marine Council was the Committee on Inter- 

 national Folic}' in the Marine Environment. Another action by the 

 Council was to recommend creation of an operating agency in the 

 field. The policy conmiittee lapsed in 1971, and was replaced by an 

 Interagency Law-of-the-Sea Task Force, imder the chairmanship of 

 the Legal Adviser of the Department of State. The agency, as created 

 by the Congress in October 1970, took the form of the National 

 Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).^^ 



A U.S. policy was proposed May 23, 1970, by Frcsident Ni.xon, 

 who called for two types of "international machinery": 



First, I propose that coastal nations act as trustees for the international com- 

 munity in an international trusteeship zone consisting of the continental margins 

 hej'ond a depth of 200 meters off their coasts. In return, each coastal State would 

 receive a share of the international revenues from the zone in which it acts as 

 trustee and could impose additional taxes if these were deemed desirable. 



As a second stop, agreed international machinery would authorize and regulate 

 exploration and use of seabed resources beyond the continental margins. ^^ 



As the study concluded, it was ''too early to predict what success 

 the U.S. proposal will achieve". It was likely to encounter opposition 

 not onl}' abroad but at home as well. Moi-eover, the proposal left 

 untouched the thorny question of where the seabed began and the 

 coastal shelf terminated. The U.S. position favored a 12-mile limit. 

 Latin American nations clung to their 200-mile limits. Agreement 

 would not come eas}-. 



Role of Congress 



Numerous committees and subcommittees of the Congress had 

 interested themselves in the seabed problem.^'' An early congressional 

 action was the creation of the Marine Council. Following the Malta 

 proposal to the United Nations, 



Al)out 3 dozen resolutions were introduced in the House and the Senate, 

 mostly in opposition to vesting control over the deep ocean resources in the 

 United Nations. House resolutions were for the most part identical, expressing 



tz Jbid., pp. 4!l6-l(t7 

 sa Ibid., p. 498. 



M lbid.\ p. 510. 



«5 These are enumerated on p. 4% of tlic study. 



