80 



March 2, 1981 



Repor t o f the U.S. Delegation on the Meeting of the Drafting 

 Comm ittc o of the Third UN Conferen c e or the Law of the Sea 

 January 12 - March T, 1961 



Summary. 



The Drafting Committee approved over a thousand amend- 

 ments to the text of the Draft Convention on the Law of the 

 Sea (Informal Text) (UN Doc. A/CONF . 62/V,'P. 10/Rev.3) . These 

 resulted from an article-by-article review of Second 

 Committee texts (Parts II-X and Annexes I and II) and Third 

 Committee texts (Parts XII-XIV) . The amendments are technical 

 and stylistic. They are designed to improve the style and 

 clarity of the texts in each language and to enhance the 

 concordance of texts in the six official languages. 



Because of time pressures, the Committee was able only 

 to begin the process of an article-by-article review of 

 First Committee texts (Parts XI and related annexes) , and 

 could not deal with the preamble, Part I (definitions) and 

 the Informal Plenary texts (Parts XV to XVII) . Attempts to 

 prepare, and forward to the competent organ of the Conference, 

 a list of technical questions that might have substantive 

 implications did not succeed. 



Despite a very intensive schedule frequently .Tunning 

 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., the Drafting Committee still 

 faces a large amount of work on deferred items with respect 

 to texts on which recommendations have been made, and with 

 respect to an initial review of texts on which no recommenda- 

 tions have been made. 



Procedure. 



The Drafting Committee and all its organs functioned 

 by consensus. The Committee, chaired by Ambassador Beesley 

 of Canada, has limited membership that does not include dele- 

 gations that wish to, and might be expected to, participate 

 in its work (e.g. China, France, and the U.K.). Moreover, 

 it was recognized at an early stage that any attempt to do 

 initial drafting work in several languages at once would 

 lead to confusion. Accordingly,, the Drafting Committee 

 established six language groups, one for each of \e official 

 languages, all of which' arc open to all conference partici- 

 pants. The chairmen or coordinators of the language groups 

 are as follows: 



