Law of the Sea "No" From U.S. Burns U.N.

After nine years of negotiations, the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference came to a close on April 30, with the United States government isolating itself from the international community. The U.S. took a hard line on the issue of commercial mining rights, a position which angered Third World countries - and ironically disturbed some mining companies.

By a vote of 130 nations in favor, four against (led by the United States), and 17 abstaining, the U.N. adopted the Law of the Sea Convention. The delegates had hoped for a consensus agreement. "I was both surprised and disappointed" at the U.S. government's decision, says Tommy B. Koh, U.N. ambassador from Singapore and president of the Conference.

The Convention governs many uses of the ocean - which the U.N. body calls "the common heritage of mankind" - including navigation, overflight, fishing, and shipping. But the one aspect of the Convention that the U.S. objected to concerns the rights of mineral companies to exploit manganese, copper, cobalt and nickel that lie on, or just below, the seabed floor.

The Convention sets rules for the production of the minerals, and establishes an International Seabed Authority, with its own company called Enterprise, to conduct mining alongside private and state ventures.

In early 1981, the Reagan Administration announced that it was reviewing the position of three previous U.S. presidents who had negotiated the Conference, and decided to postpone any further negotiations for one year.

Back at the Conference this spring, the U.S. delegation showed some apparent willingness to compromise, but by the end of the seven-week negotiations, the Reagan Administration's resolve had stiffened.

"The seabed mining provisions would deter the development of deep seabed mineral resources," stated James Malone, U.S. ambassador to the Law of the Sea Conference, on the final day of the session. "It would deny the play of basic economic forces in the market place."

"I'm slightly incredulous," confessed Koh, the president of the Conference, when asked by Multinational Monitor for his reaction to the U.S. position. "First the Reagan Administration insisted on asking the other countries to wait a whole year while deciding what its position was," Koh says. "Second, the Administration reopened issues previously negotiated and settled, and then succeeded in changing a very substantial basket" of the Convention's articles. For "all these painful concessions," Koh adds, "we got a 'no' from the U.S. at the end of the day." '

The chief concession that the developing countries made was to guarantee mineral exploitation rights of "pioneer investors" - those Western companies that have already begun exploring the deep seabed. The Convention agreed, at the urging of the U.S., to allow these pioneer investors (see chart) to mine the sites they are currently exploring, once the Convention comes into force, possibly as early as December, 1984.

"Some modest improvements" were made in the Convention, acknowledged the U.S. delegate Malone, but "there has been an unyielding refusal on the part of some to engage in real negotiations on most of the major concerns" of the U.S., he told the session.

Surprisingly, the mining companies are of different minds about the merits of the Law of the Sea Convention and the prudence of the U.S. decision to vote against it.

On the one hand, Ocean Mining Associates - a consortium of U.S. Steel, Sun, Union Miniere and ENI - staunchly supports the Reagan stance. "It certainly would have been disastrous to let the document sail through on consensus," says Jef Amsbaugh, president of the consortium. By voting against the convention, adds Amsbaugh, U.S. officials "stood up and did what they were supposed to do."

On the other hand, a high official from another major ocean mining consortium believes that the convention made some real progress, particularly in regards to protecting the pioneer investments of the companies. That "resolution was excellent," he says. "Basically it does the job" by allowing for "the broad recognition of mineral rights for exploration and exploitation. That's not to be sneezed at."

The mining company official, who does have some problems with the treaty, thinks that "however defective it may be," the Convention should be signed for practical reasons. "We can't ignore that two major industrial countries - France and Japan - have signed the treaty," he warns. "The treaty exists. It won't go away. We'll have to deal with it."

Moreover, the official is worried that no company's management - much less any bank - will put up the financing for such an expensive project as ocean mining unless the company's claims are secure in terms of international law.

"It's going to be very difficult for the board of directors (of a mining company or its parent) to agree to a venture on such a flimsy basis," he says. "That hasn't been faced up to. It's not just a case of the supply of money, but of the risk the money will be put at."

Why, then, did the U.S. - which told the delegates of the Convention that it wanted to "bring more orderly and productive uses of the deep seabeds to reality" - vote against the Law of the Sea Convention?

"The Reagan Administration is made up of two groups of conservatives," theorizes ambassador Koh, "the pragmatic conservatives and the ideological conservatives." In this case, "the pragmatic conservatives lost and the ideological conservatives won," Koh says. "These are people who believe the U.N. is an evil place and that the U.S. has the firepower to take care of its interests without the U.N."