B-21 



in the last couple of weeks: 



We tried to get access so that we could comment on them 

 -- to the drafts by other nations of the proposed living re- 

 sources regimes, and we were told that we couldn't have those, 

 at least at this time. 



It makes it a little bit difficult for us to comment in- 

 telligently on, you know, the real world — . which is the 

 world of the Antarctic consultative parties negotiating — 

 if we don't have access to that kind of information and data 

 — and it is often the case in our experience that advisory 

 committees can circumvent that particular problem because 

 of the restrictions on the information. 



CHAIRMAN BREWSTER: Precisely, and that is one of the rea- 

 sons that I had planned, beginning now a year ago — and that 

 was a year ago in November — to establish an advisory com- 

 mittee precisely for that reason. 



But absent the advisory committee, we are faced with 

 the fact that the practice of the Antarctic Treaty is to clas- 

 sify, or to treat as classified, all of its documents and we 

 are required to so hold them. » 



Those documents submitted by the United States have a dif- 

 ferent status, and we have made them available. 



Within the Antarctic Treaty, specifically the Ninth Consul- 

 tative Meeting, the United States fielded a proposal to change 

 this system, and it was met with great approval in private 

 but no support in the plenary meetings whatsoever. In fact, 

 the references to the United States proposal for the require- 

 ment for greater information being made available to the pub- 

 lic and the fact that the declassification of documents had 

 been discussed was at one juncture deleted from the final re- 

 port. It was put back in, and it will be on the agenda of the 

 Tenth Consultative Meeting. 



I have to add that the apprehension some of our partners 

 in the Antarctic forum feel is justified. There are some dele- 

 gations which are able to submit working papers and to discuss 

 ideas and proposals in the Antarctic Treaty forum which they 

 are unable to discuss in their own countries and, I suspect, 

 they may be unable to discuss with certain officials in their 

 foreign ministries. And they are apprehensive that a release 

 of documents, or a system which would require the Consulta- 

 tive Parties to classify those documents they wish to classify 



