597 



London and we are going to fight in a regional conference to pro- 

 mote a position that ignores our own law? 



Is that really what you are saying? 



Ms. Hughes. Mr. Chairman, let me clarify. 



First of all, the U.S. delegation worked very hard to achieve 

 what I think everyone present in London agreed was a great suc- 

 cess. 



Mr. D'Amours. No, that is not true, but go ahead. 



Ms. Hughes. In the Kiribati-Nauru proposal, two very small Pa- 

 cific island countries were successful in elevating a very important 

 international question to the highest level of attention that it could 

 receive in London. It dominated the weeklong discussions. 



We did in fact achieve consensus that this was a very important 

 issue, and that it should be submitted to the requisite study. The 

 United States, as I attempted to reflect in my testimony, is in the 

 forefront of pushing to make sure that that study is comprehen- 

 sive, is completed on time, and meets the requirements that it has 

 to meet that the Kiribati Nauru proposal will in fact be given the 

 fullest possible review. We, in answer to the comment earlier from 

 Mr. Sunia agree that the smaller countries are certainly not in the 

 position to provide all of the technical and scientific expertise they 

 may wish to provide. We are aggressively attempting to make sure 

 that all of the available scientific and technical expertise is 

 brought to bear in this important question. 



So I think that the United States definitely did exert a leader- 

 ship position in London. 



With respect to the Spanish resolution, if I could simply say for 

 the record, that resolution followed almost immediately on the 

 heels of the consensus that was reached on the Kiribati Nauru pro- 

 posal. 



That resolution, to the best of my recollection, and I think the 

 meeting record also reflects this, was not circulated in advance for 

 parties such as the United States to work on. 



We, nevertheless, did, with the limited amount of time available 

 to us there in the conference room and on the floor, attempt to 

 insert modifying language that would have enabled the United 

 States and possibly other countries, to support the Spanish resolu- 

 tion by consensus. 



It is unclear at this time if any effort 



Mr. D'Amours. Was there a motion made to insert that? 



Ms. Hughes. Yes, sir, there was. The Canadian delegation of- 

 fered a clarifying point that the resolution was in fact nonbinding 

 and that in fact, what it attempted to do was to express the good- 

 faith effort on the part of the parties to the London dumping con- 

 ference not to dump while this important scientific review was 

 under way. 



Thereupon, the United States made a formal motion that the Ca- 

 nadian viewpoint be formally incorporated into the text of the 

 Spanish resolution, and we were unfortunately overruled on a pro- 

 cedural point, and a vote was taken. 



It is unclear to me whether or not, given the inflexibility of the 

 Spanish delegation's instructions from their capital, whether any 

 further effort on the part of the U.S. delegation to modify the text 

 would have proven successful. 



