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regarded as essentially one of resolving conflicts between those who 

 are interested in maximizing territorial prerogatives, on the one hand, 

 and those interested in maximizing another national prerogative, 

 namely freedom of navigation, on the other. Surely the underlying 

 concept of the negotiations must be that the whole ocean is to be 

 treated as a genuinely common resource, and that anyone who asserts 

 a claim of right to benefit from that common resource must comply 

 with requirements which the community imposes on it, particularly 

 with respect to nonabuse of the resource. 



This would mean at the very least that no individual nation would 

 be left under this treaty in the position to abuse that common resource 

 simply because it is in fact in an advantageous position to exploit it 

 for its own benefit. 



Now, this is an approach not unknown to these negotiations. Indeed, 

 the U.S. participation in the negotiations has from time to time in- 

 voked elements of it in proposals placed before the negotiations. 

 Nevertheless, if such an approach is to be effectively applied even on 

 the one issue of environmental protection, a searching review will be 

 required. 



I would suggest that the following elements will need to be intro- 

 duced into drafts of a comprehensive law-of-the-sea treaty as the 

 negotiations proceed. 



First, the treatv should establish state responsibility for iniury to 

 any portion of the marine environment, whether the portion injured 

 is under national jurisdiction or not. This responsibility should not 

 be simplv a tort relationship between states. It ouirht to be also a re- 

 lationship between individual states and the community as a whole 

 with respect to the world ocean. 



Next, the treaty in my view should not onlv establish a basic obliga- 

 tion of states in general terms to preserve the marine environment — 

 which, of itself, I think is a pious wish. It sho\ild lay on states an 

 obligation to conform both their conduct and national regulations to 

 such minimum regulatory standards as may be adopted in the future 

 by international mechanisms. 



Next, such an international regulatory mechanism should be created 

 by the treaty, with the authoritv to consider all forms of threat or 

 injury to the ocean environment from whatever sources, and to develop 

 and adopt regulations through one or another of the established kind 

 of regulatory competence which have been conferred on other inter- 

 national organizations in the past. This might be an expanded and 

 reconstructed IMCO. and the regulatorv competence conferred might 

 be like that alreadv proposed by the Ignited States last week with 

 respect to vessel pollution, but of course expanded to cover all forms 

 of environmental injury to the ocean. 



Next, I would suggest that the other international institutions that 

 would be created bv the treaty, and particularly that for management 

 of ocean bed exploitation, should be joined in the same institution. 



The treatv should clearlv provide, as a means of giving teeth to 

 dispute settlement mechanisms, that rights to use of the ocean as a 

 whole are conditioned upon compliance with the obligation not to 

 abuse it. 



There should be effective means of suspending those rights until 

 compliance has been restored or reparation has been made. It should 



