577 
In a footnote to my prepared statement I point out that in our 1969 
draft report, which will soon be submitted to the respective councils, 
we say that there may well be a difference of opinion as to whether the 
1958 convention should be construed as saying that the jurisdiction of 
the coastal nations now, underscoring “now,” embraces the area down 
to this junction with the deep ocean floor, or whether, on the other hand, 
it should be construed simply as carving out and protecting the ex- 
clusive right, the exclusive option, of the coastal nation to extend its 
jurisdiction out to that limit progressively as technology permits ex- 
ploitation at greater and greater depths. Many of us feel that it does 
not matter greatly whether the outer limit of exclusive sovereign rights 
of the coastal nation is characterized as a boundary of rights hereto- 
fore vested in the coastal nation, or as a limit on jurisdiction to be 
acquired in futuro by exploitation at greater and greater depths, be- 
cause in either event article 2 of the convention stipulates that occu- 
ation and exploitation by any other state of the area within this outer 
na is prohibited. This outer limit, as I shall develop in a moment, 
is, we think, the junction of the continental landmass with the deep 
ocean floor, far beyond the 200-meter depth line. 
Out to this limit, we are dealing with an area which is now within 
the exclusive field of interest of the United States. Whether or not it 
is characterized as being territory in which the sovereign rights of the 
United States are now vested, it is clearly an area from which all other 
nations are excluded, and which is reserved exclusively for exploita- 
tion under the authority and license of the United States, as the ad- 
vance of technology makes such exploitation possible. 
I continue now with the quotation from the report of the sections 
in 1968 as to why the maximum rights under the Coatinental Shelf 
Convention should be asserted and defended by our Government. I 
quote : 
If the minerals underlying the seabed adjacent to our coasts remain under 
American control, as they now are under the Continental Shelf Convention as 
we construe it, they continue to be resources available for national defense, es- 
sential components of the American economy, and important elements of the 
Federal and State tax base. 
We do not believe that it is in the interests of the United States that negotia- 
tions for the creation of an international regime to govern mineral development 
of the ocean floor should proceed on the assumption that this new regime will 
have authority to take over the administration of, or the governmental revenues 
derived from, the development of the minerals or any part of the submerged 
segments of the American continent. 
In our opinion, the United States should stand on its rights under the Con- 
vention as heretofore ratified. 
If legal uncertainties are believed to constitute an impediment to utilization of 
undersea mineral resources, such uncertainties can be eliminated by uniform 
declarations of the coastal nations which are parties to the Convention on the 
Continental Shelf, identifying their claims of jurisdiction with the submerged 
portion of the continental land mass, and reciprocally restricting their claims 
accordingly. No new conference to amend the Continental Shelf Convention 
iS necessary to accomplish this. 
I referred earlier to the 1969 draft report of these same sections, 
which will go before the respective councils next week. In this draft 
report, the lawyers who have been studying this matter exhaustively 
for the past several months say this: 
We reaffirm our opinion that the concept of adjacency contained in the present 
Shelf Convention should properly be interpreted to include the submerged con- 
