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13 



delegation. The result was a political disaster, pure and simple. Although the Treaty text 

 was initialled by the U.S. and Canadian negotiators, the United States Government 

 declined to sign. The reason was that, upon discovering secret concessions had been 

 made by our negotiator, members of the U.S. Delegation protested to a key Senator, who 

 responded by promising to defeat any effort by the Administration to win advice and 

 consent to ratification.* 



The Canadians were genuinely enraged by the refusal of the U.S. to sign the 

 initialled Treaty, but realizing that even a renegotiated agreement would be in their 

 national interest, they consented to resumed talks. After more than two years of hard 

 bargaining and at least two ruptures in the negotiations, as well as repeated Canadian 

 threats of a fish war, the necessary remedial concessions were won by the U.S. side and 

 the Treaty was signed and ratified. I stress that this result was only possible, because the 

 U.S. Government adopted for the resumed negotiations an open, consensus-driven 

 approach to the development and presentation of concessions (and demands). No position 

 was put forward that was regarded by any member of the delegation as being unfair or 

 unwise. There were, as diplomacy sometimes dictated, private meetings of the 

 negotiators, but the U.S. offered no concessions that had not been cleared in advance by 

 the entire delegation. 



* It was at this stage, that I was instructed to take the lead in an effort to renegotiate the 

 Treaty. Later, following high-level interventions by Canada with the United States 

 Government, the Honorable Edward Denvinski was assigned the task of providing 

 political leadership to the U.S. Delegation. His outstanding contributions to the process, 

 including most importantly, the development of consensus in our delegation and the 

 communication to Canada of the limits of U.S. flexibility, were critical to the successful 

 conclusion of the negotiations. Accordingly, our two signatures appear for the United 

 States on the Treaty. 



