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bility entails the submission of still other issues to international discussion and 
negotiation, at least unless this difficulty is anticipated and avoided. Thus if the 
U.S. pushes to reach international agreement on a narrow continental shelf as 
the Commission proposes and to secure agreement on a specific seabed regime 
(or on any other proposal concerning these topics), it seems to be only prudent 
to inquire what other issues will be considered and how these issues might have 
to be adjusted in order to secure the kind of agreement we seek on the shelf limit 
and the regime beyond. It certainly is not at all beyond anticipation that there 
will be a strong move by some states, perhaps a large number: 
(1) to secure agreement on a wide territorial sea ; 
(2) to make it entirely ciear (as it is not now) that warships do not enjoy 
a right of innocent passage through the territorial sea ; 
(3) to assure exclusive fishing rights in a wide fishing zone as a possible 
alternative to a territorial sea of a particularly wide sort; 
(4) to establsh new and more severe restrictions upon the conduct of scien- 
tific research ; and 
(5) to place special restraints on military uses of the seabed, the water 
column and the surface. 
In the proper exercise of prudence the U.S. and other states would each cer- 
tainly have to determine how their exclusive interests are affected by alternative 
disposition of these issues and would attempt to estimate how other states might 
vote to resolve these issues. In the process a decision must certainly be made 
concerning what of these and other issues deserves priority and how much 
weight is to be placed on this or that resolution of ‘an issue in relation to other 
issues. 
If this picture of the future is reasonably accurate, and certainly past experi- 
ence suggests this pattern of events is likely, it seems to me reasonable to wonder 
why the Commission did not address this problem specifically. It does not appear 
to me to be satisfactory to observe, as the Commission did, that its recommenda- 
tions are inter-related and that if one is rejected it “would raise serious ques- 
tions in the minds of the Commission as to the advisability of continuing with 
the others.” The point is that the issues involved are inter-related not only among 
themselves but with still other ocean issues such as fishing and military uses. In 
the end it seems to me unusually difficult to understand exactly what the Com- 
mission is recommending. If, as seems most likely, one or several of the Com- 
missions recommendations will be changed then apparently we are left without 
any Commission recommendations as to U.S. policies on these issues. 
It is not my purpose to suggest that the task of evaluating the interests of the 
numerous states concerned will always be so complex that the negotiating process 
is impossible in the sense that one cannot entertain reasonably reliable 
expectations about the outcome. It will some time be necessary to confront some 
very delicate issues in a large international gathering and to reach more or less 
realistic conclusions. At some time in the future this confrontation will be a 
reasonable proposition. My point is rather that we need time for thorough prepa- 
ration for such a meeting and this time should be sufficiently extended that we 
can get a better idea than anyone now has about the resources of the ocean floor 
including the geological shelf, slope, rise and beyond. I suspect this means that 
an international conference should not be convened before 1975 at the earliest 
and more likely 1980. 
Having said this it seems to me necessary to add that this preference is very 
unlikely to be realized. A far more reasonable prediction is that a general inter- 
national conference will be convened before 1975, perhaps even sooner, and that 
it will be essential for the developed states to have made as extensive preparation 
as is possible by that time. Thus, the urgent problem confronting policy-makers 
is how one prepares for negotiations in circumstances characterized by (1) a 
widespread ignorance of the marine environment and its resources; (2) a strong 
drive by developing states to secure a share in the “common heritage”; (3) an 
equally (at least) strong feeling on the part of these states of distrust of some 
or all of the developed states in their military use of the ocean ; (4) a widespread 
suspicion among LDC’s that the conduct of marine science research is prosecuted 
by the developing states primarily in order to obtain exclusive rights to valuable 
resources (which may not be there) ; (5) an international decision process which 
will be overwhelmingly dominated by developing states possessing little or no 
heme-owned capability in ocean use with the exception of fishing. 
