Common need for laws will aid agreement

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34130, 17 April 1976, Page 17

Common need for laws will aid agreement

(This is the final of three article bys

CEDRIC MENTIPLAY,

on the law of the sea.)

Some measure of ,• scorn has been poured! upon previous meetings of the United Nations Conference on the Law I of the Sea, due to the' absence of firm decisions. A common reaction is that it will end ”as other United Nations conferences have” with a list of high-flying recommendations which individual members may accept or ignore as they think fit. This is unfair. United Nations conferences may make iaw but they are not legislatures. It is up to each state to decide whether or not it will accept the new laws The effectiveness of •By conference must be 1 juaged. not by the efficiency; of its report, but by the; amount of positive support i it has achieved. The conference has fol-j lowed the pattern adopted 1 by trie seabed committee,, in that it operates where! possible by consensus. There; is a cooling-off period, fol-j lowed by a determination; . that ail efforts at reaching generai agreement has e been exhausted, before an issue is put tc the vote. Votes of substance require a two-thirds majority of the. States participating at that session — a decision which makes it harder for a majority to co-erce a minority But this gives minority countries something similar to a veto power. It has been difficult to break down stands on extreme issues, and it has been noted that extreme minorities tend to stand together rather than! seek an over-all solution. Admittedly, the working] out of a new code of laws! for the -ea is taking a long! t - i mly basic text' ha- been the draft set of articles produced by the! International Law Commis- i Sion, an expert body which’ presented its findings to the I 1958 Geneva Convention.! Succeeding conferences have] added a stack of competing; ideas and proposals. Progress made It was a major break-: through last vear when the. chairmen of the three main committees of the Geneva! session were instructed to Prepare texts on the a ! lo-| cated issues. Together they p- 300 draft artic es. which between them covered all progress made. This is the document which the present conference is discussing in New York today, and which it will continue to discuss for some Weeks to come. So 1976 is believed to be

ithe year of progress. It has to be, for pressures are 'building up, as shown by ■ continuing jn cidents such as the c/Ahes between Icelandic gunboats and Brit--1 ish trawHts in the North Sea, plus the roving “piracy” of long-range fishing fleets in the Pacific and the Antarctic. The 12-mile territorial limit appears to have almost complete acceptance, though some countries have held out for a 200-mile lir.it. The substantiation of a 188-mile “economic zone” outside the 12 miles of home waters has now become a goal close to achievement. It has the support of 200 States, though there is some disagreement as to the extent of the controlling iState’s jurisdiction. Can ; other States place artificial installations or. the seabed in the zone? What are the priorities if someone wants! to plant an oil-rig in the; middle of a busy sea-lane? | Couple this with the inter- j est of some States in plan-! ‘ ting missile, counter-missile. ( and sonobuoy installations' ion the seabed and we have a} real problem. It is no secret, for instance, that the Great Powers have already surveyed fast-travel lanes in the Pacific for their nuclear submarines. Such lanes are

identifiable, and the planting of listening-posts is a simple development of the earlywarning systems in use ever since World War II as protection against air attack. The 200-mile economic zone has met some opposition ftom countries which are landlocked or cut off from free access to the sea. These countries have been forced off their original stand of complete opposition by promises of exploration and exploiting rights in the economic areas of neighbour States.

It is unlikely that this problem will be settled at this conference. The likelihood is that the issue will be left for negotiation between individual countries.

The arbitrary setting of boundaries 200 miles from the coast does not suit some nations. This is the group which has been impressed by ideas expressed at the 1958 Geneva convention on the continental shelf. In short, these are the countries whose continental shelves are most extensive. Mineral claims

There are about 40 of them, including New Zealand. In the case of Argentina the continental shelf extends for well over 500 miles. Such States can claim their right to the whole of the natural prolongation of their territories and of course to any mineral, metallic, or other resources to be found in those submerged lands. Out of this resistance has come the suggestion that the “economic zone,” or the boundary of national jurisdiction over seabed resources. should extend to 200 miles or to the outer edge of the continental margin, whichever is the greater.

So New Zealand has two alternatives, neither of which would be distasteful to us.

There are many other arguments on finer points of the sea-law, but most of them could ■well be left to follow the establishment of main points. It is difficult, for instance, to argue in open council the rights of a Dutch operation making an oil-strike in an Ecuadorian economic zone. Free passage But it should be possible to lay down with clarity whether warships of other nations are entitled to free and unidentified passage of Cook Strait on the reasoning that it is the only break in the J 200-mile length of the New Zealand coastline. Four years ago, New Zea-

land and Australia submitted a working paper to the seabed committee attempting to reconcile the extreme positions then existing on the “invasion” of foreign fishing fleets. This paper dealt with the problem as to whether a nation had the right to exclude another nation’s ships from its economic zone.

In one of its interpretations, this paper would exclude foreign fishing vessels, but permit other nations to buy a proportion of the catch. In another interpretation, Australia and New Zealand would determine what proportion of the allowable catch it wanted, and allow foreign vessels to take the rest. It seems likely, however, that broad principles will be established first — though this is not necessarily the end of the argument.