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bership of IOC is already open to all States Members of the United Nations 
and of other agencies within the United Nations system. That is in article 2 
of the statute. The Commission already has the power to “consider and recom- 
mend international programmes for oceanographic investigation together with 
the necessary steps for their execution’; also, “the nature, forms and methods. 
of the exchange of oceanographic data’. That is in article 4 of the statute. 
The Commission, in short, has ample scope for fruitful activity within its 
present terms of reference. We also doubt that there is need to establish an 
inter-agency board for IOC; both the Secretary-General’s proposed expanded 
programme and the decade of ocean exploration can be effectively implemented - 
without this mechanism which is likely to lead to considerable bureaucratic 
proliferation. But our main objections to the establishment of the proposed 
inter-agency board are more far-reaching. We feel that such a board may 
contribute towards shifting the main focus of United Nations action from 
establishment of an international regime and of an agency empowered to 
administer such a regime in the interests and for the benefit of all countries 
to peripheral aspects of the question before us. Furthermore, a broadened and 
strenghtened IOC, eventually developing into an international agency on the 
pattern of the present specialized agencies, aS we have reason to believe is 
the intention in some quarters, would probably impede the creation of a body 
to administer the ocean floor beyond national jurisdiction, a body which we 
believe to be essential eventually if developing countries are to share equitably 
in practice in the benefits to be derived from the exploitation of sea-bed 
resources. Thus we view with considerable concern developments which, while 
not illogical on a purely technical or bureaucratic plane, may well endanger 
the long-term interests of many countries, the protection of which was the 
main purpose of the initiative taken by my Government. 
In short, the fear of some is that the developed states, acting in cooperation 
through the IOC, will mount an intensified exploration of ocean resources and 
an intensified program of scientific research and that the results of these pro- - 
grams, in the absence of deliberate actions to avoid them, will be to benefit 
solely the developed states, leaving the others to whistle. The issue of a regime, 
says Ambassador Pardo, must be kept alive in the General Assembly, for other- 
wise the IOC will be developed into a specialized agency and the regime, or 
lack thereof, will be frustrated by those who will be dominant in IOC. 
This same distrust of the developed states, irrespective of ideology, is to be seen 
in two other developments, the reception accorded the U.S. sponsored proposal 
for an International Decade of Ocean Exploration (IDOE) and the handling 
of the issue of disarmament in the ocean. With respect to the International 
Decade, which had originally been advanced in March, 1968, through a White 
House pronouncement, the U.S. sought General Assembly endorsement through 
a resolution. This effort was successful, but though no vote was recorded on 
this issue it is understood from qualified observers that this part of Resolution 
2467, adopted in December, 1968, was subject to considerable reservation on the 
part of developing states. 
With regard to ocean military uses, it was quite clear from the very beginning 
of First Committee debate that both the U.S. and the Soviet Union were con- 
cerned that the question of specific disarmament measures might somehow be 
snatched out of the more-or-less comforting embrace of the Highteen Nation 
Disarmament Committee to be deposited in the more forbidding forum of the 
General Assembly. Although the U.S. and the Soviet Union might not, and prob- 
ably do not, yet share a common view on the scope of arms control measures 
in the ocean, it seems plain from their contributions to First Committee debate 
that they both preferred discussion of the matter be reserved primarily to the 
ENDC. Thus Ambassador Wiggins declared : 
The main danger of an arms race on the sea-bed lies in the possibility that 
it may become a new environment in which weapons of mass destruction are 
emplaced. Even though the general subject of sea-bed arms control is already 
included in the present agenda of the Highteen-Nation Committee on Dis- 
armament, we believé it would be useful for the General Assembly to give 
a more precise indication of its desires to the Disarmament Committee in 
Geneva. ( 
The United States strongly feels that the sea-bed and the deep ocean floor 
should not become an arena for an armaments race. We must work towards 
effective action, in conditions of mutual confidence, to enable States with the 
potential capability of emplacing weapons of mass destruction on the deep ocean 
