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hard in the coming months to exercise leadership in that negotia- 

 tion to see if we can reach a meaningful agreement that does more 

 than put words on paper. There are a lot of words being spilled in 

 this negotiation right now. The negotiating text is enormously long. 

 It is quite difficult to get a handle on what the obligations are. And 

 one of the things that we in the United States are going to have 

 to do is help pare that down and transform what has been gen- 

 erally a global discussion about fisheries issues into a meaningful 

 international agreement. 



Now let me turn for a moment to the new Donut Hole Treaty. 

 This is the treaty that deals with the area beyond national jurisdic- 

 tion in the Bering Sea. It is at the White House now. It should be 

 submitted shortly to the Senate for advice and consent to ratify. 

 This gives a real content to the duty of states to cooperate on the 

 high seas. This was a long, tough negotiation. It took us 3 years 

 and 10 meetings to put it together, but I think I can say we have 

 got a state-of-the-art international fishing agreement out of this 

 process. It is an agreement for the 21st century. It is going to re- 

 quire 100-percent transponder use in the Donut Hole, it is going to 

 require ftill observer coverage in the Donut Hole, and it is basically 

 going to let decisions made oy the coastal states, and in particular 

 the United States, on conservation issues, translate themselves 

 into the high seas area of that region. 



It is going to be, I think, one of the agreements that the inter- 

 national community will look to in the ftiture to say this is the way 

 that it should be done. I am certainly pleased with the effort that 

 our delegation put into it. Both Washington State and Alaska put 

 a lot of energy into that negotiation. We had good participation 

 from both areas, and I think we have got a real good agreement. 

 And again, I know that time is short in this Congress, out if we 

 could get advice and consent to ratify that treaty this year it would 

 again put us in the forefront of bringing this agreement into force. 



Certainly, another region of great importance to the United 

 States is the Central and Western Pacific and the tuna agreement 

 that we have out there. This is one of those situations where we 

 are sort of on the other side of the fence. We are not the coastal 

 state, we are the fishing state in the region. One of the things that 

 with the help of the industry we have been able to do is to be very 

 evenhanded in the way we have approached this. The Islanders al- 

 ways look at what the United States is requiring in our zone or 

 with respect to fishing that is going on just outside of our zone, and 

 they want that to translate into what our industry does in that re- 

 gion. 



With the cooperation of the industry I think we have been able 

 to satisfy the island governments and just a year-and-a-half ago we 

 were able to reach agreement on a 10-year extension of that agree- 

 ment which does a great deal for certainty in the industry. This is 

 an agreement that we are, at the State Department, certainly com- 

 mitted to nourishing. It is a good agreement for our industry and 

 it is a good agreement for our foreign policy with the small island 

 countries in this area. 



I might say that we are just beginning to recognize, though, the 

 problem that you noted at the outset, Mr. Chairman, which is the 

 increased fishing effort that is going into the South Pacific and 



