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diction, of the deep seabed, the ocean or any part thereof, inchiding 

 either above, under, or around. Is that correct? 



Mr. Popper. Yes, sir, that is correct. They could not legally bind 

 this country without its consent. 



Mr. Gross. Mr. Chairman, if I may ask a question, what is the 

 memorandum? Where was this prepared and what does it represent? 

 Who prepared this? 



Mr. Popper. Mr. Chairman, I think you have there a copy, not 

 on the original paper, of the proposal made by the representative 

 of Malta. 



Now, the normal procedure when a delegate wants to put an item 

 on the agenda is to submit a title, which he has done here, a declaration 

 and treaty and so on, and an explanatory memorandum. That has 

 evidently been copied on the letterhead of the Committee on Foreign 

 Affairs, but the original is a U.N. document. 



Mr. Gross. May I assume that this is a true copy of the 

 memorandum? 



Mr. Fascell. I think you can, Mr. Gross. It was made by our staff. 



Mr. Gross. I thought that is what we were dealing with, the 

 memorandum submitted by the Maltese delegation to the United 

 Nations, but I wanted to be doubly sure of it. 



Item 3, ''It is therefore considered the time has come to declare 

 the seabed and the ocean floor a common heritage of mankind and 

 immediate steps should be taken to draft a treaty embodying" and so 

 on and so forth. 



Well, I can agree with the chau-man that this is not saying that 

 the United Nations is going to draft the treaty or that the organiza- 

 tion or agency, whatever it may be, will be completely under the 

 jurisdiction of the United Nations, but this is where it begins, and 

 I would be surprised and I think the chau-man would be surprised if 

 this was not kept within the jurisdiction of the United Nations in 

 some form or another. It would be an offspring of the United Nations. 



Does the Chairman agree? 



Mr. Fascell. Not necessarily. 



Mr. Popper. The language is quite open-ended. It says neither 

 yes nor no. 



Mr. Gross. You can bet your life it is open-ended, and apparently 

 for a purpose. 



Mr. Fascell. The treaty would have to prescribe, would it not, 

 if one were going to be written, that the organization created under 

 the treaty would be part of the United Nations? Otherwise it could 

 very well be an independent international organization. Unless a 

 convention or a treaty itself would provide for the establishment of 

 an agency specifically affiliated with the United Nations, it wouldn't 

 be. It couldn't be. It cannot be properly inferred that a group of 

 signatory nations to a convention automatically are under the U.N, 



They are automatically out from under the U.N., as a matter 

 of fact, by virtue of the fact that they sign a separate convention, 

 unless the agreement specifically provides a relationship with the U.N. 



Mr. Popper. I would expect that any treaty written and conchided 

 would contain within it some statement of what the relationship to 

 the United Nations Vv^ould be. How close, how distant, one can't say 

 at this time. 



