140 



12 



I think it fair to say that the 1993/1994 negotiations were a failure on an 

 unprecedented scale. Canada intervened at the highest levels of our government, in the 

 effort to engineer a political result that could not be achieved in the Commission and could 

 not be reconciled with the rules laid down by the Treaty and the MOU. The Canadians 

 threatened a fish war and then imposed illegal transit fees on our vessels. To the great 

 credit of our government, the Canadian tactics yielded no concessions. On the contrary, 

 the Administration and the Congress presented a strong, unified fi-ont on the issue of fees 

 that compelled the Canadians to abandon that tactic. And, we did not flinch, when 

 confronted by threats of unilateral management aimed at the deliberate overfishing of our 

 weak salmon stocks. In the end, Canada returned to the negotiating table. 



To its very great discredit, however, the U.S. Government ultimately resorted to 

 secret negotiations and to offers of wholly unwarranted concessions, for which, of course, 

 no concurrence was sought firom the most directly affected parties. (I am attaching to this 

 statement a copy of my recent letter on this subject to the Department of Commerce 

 official who has been assigned lead responsibility on the U.S. side for the negotiations with 

 Canada.) The most pernicious element of the U.S. concession package with respect to the 

 Fraser River was the intent to inflict the entire cost on one sector--the non-Indian 

 fishermen. Fortunately, Canada rejected the U.S. offer. Had the case been otherwise, a 

 long but fi-agile history of cooperation, based on equal sharing of benefits and burdens 

 between tribal and non--tribal fishermen, would have been utterly shattered. The 

 consequences would have been severe, to say the least. 



In this instance, as in others, history holds an important lesson that has been 

 ignored. It should be remembered that, at a critical juncture of the original Treaty 

 negotiations, the U.S. offered concessions that had not been accepted by members of its 



