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chairman would write up what he considered to be the 

 position that had the most support in each session, or in 

 each group of sessions. These write-ups were then stitched 

 together to be something called the preliminary text or the 

 negotiating text, something like that. These guys were all 

 lawyers, so-called international lawyers. 



International lawyers are a very interesting group of 

 people because they aren't really lawyers, they are word 

 choppers. They try to be quite precise when it's desirable 

 to be precise, and quite vague when it's desirable to be 

 quite vague. They invent what are called "terms of art." 

 For example, traditionally in admiralty law is something 

 called the "right of innocent passage," which is the right 

 to go through the other guy's territorial sea, as long as 

 you just go on through without stopping, and as long as you 

 have peaceful intentions. They invented a term for this 

 business of going through straits called "transit passage, " 

 "the right of transit passage." "Transit passage" was the 

 right to overfly, to fly over the strait, or under it in a 

 submarine, or on the surface, all three. Whereas with the 

 innocent passage, you can only go on the surface. 



The reason why this had to be invented was that with 

 the extension of the territorial sea from three miles to 

 twelve miles, many straits were completely covered by the 

 territorial sea of the states on the two sides. Like the 

 Strait of Gibraltar was, for example, and the Straits 

 of Babel Mandab and many other straits, the Straits of 

 Sumatra. They were all covered within the territorial sea 

 of the coastal states. So you had to develop a system for 

 navies and military vessels and planes to go through 

 them without hindrance. That was one of the iirportant 

 things the United States wanted, was the right of "transit 

 passage". 



Another term of art was the "archipelagic state." 

 This was like Indonesia and the Philippines and Hawaiian 

 Islands, which said that the waters within the outermost 

 boundary of the islands that made up that country were 

 archipelagic waters. 



They were parts of the territorial sea. But there 

 were certain passages where you could have the right of 

 "transit passage" as well as innocent. 



Sharp: In the archipelago? 



Reveller Within the archipelago, yes. And so forth. 



The chairmen of these committees were these 

 international lawyers who wrote articles, one after the 

 other, which would get the most agreement, but by no means 

 unanimous . It was what they call "consensus . " You can 

 define "consensus" to suit yourself. It meant what they 

 thought they could get by with. I mean, not putting forth a 

 particular point of view, but what the majority of states 

 would agree to. 



Of course, this was very largely the positions that 



