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Show THE VOICE OF BUSINESS Law of the sea: Good intentions that fall short l by Richard L. Lesher, President Ch a m be r of Co m m erce of the United States Throughout history, the world's oceans have provided man with an endless source of mystery, adventure and folklore-not to mention food, energy and other natural resources. But the economic importance of the seas has never been greater than it is today, and as an exploding global population depletes known land-based resources, all nations will turn increasingly in-creasingly to ocean beds for essential mineral and energy supplies. Recognizing the inevitable international in-ternational rivalry which these vast underwater treasures have generated, . 163 nations, including the Untied States, have engaged in almost eight years of multilateral negotiations. The result: a Law of the Sea Treaty, a 183-page document with over 300 provisions governing the health, navigation, fishing and mining of the ocean. From the start, the professed intent of this herculean effort was to establish some international guidelines so that a resource-starved world can in an orderly, or-derly, secure fashion, tap this incredible in-credible potential in a way that benefits all the peoples of the world. That's a laudable goal, but there's just one problem: as it is presently written, the treaty will not only fail to achieve those aims, but it runs counter to the economic and national security interests of the United States. This was all but acknowledged by the Reagan administration when it ordered our negotiators at the latest round of the treaty, and to announce that the U.S. will conduct a thorough review of the document to determine how its inadequacies could- becorrected. . ..This dramatic policy reversal made the treaty's advocates hopping mad. And in their anger, many critics decided it was time to blame the world's favorite whipping boy-business. boy-business. The President's action, some charged, demonstrated that he was in the pocket of the mining industry. Never mind that the treaty provides no incentives for the exploration and mining of deep seabeds which are teeming with rich deposits of criticaf minerals such as cobalt, copper, manganese, platinum and nickel. In fact, it does even worse. Marne A. Dubs, director of corporate technology for the Kennecott Corporation, Cor-poration, stated it bluntly-and correctly-in a recent broadcast of "It's Your Business," the weekly public affairs television discussion program produced by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "The treaty is basically anti-production," Dubs said. "There is not only not incentive, there is disincentive disin-centive to mine the oceans, and it is doubtful anyone would mine under the present treaty." Wonderful. At time when both our industrial base and defense capability depend upon imports of precious minerals, we are out-negotiated into an agreement which would foreit our last best chance to break that dependence. Is that too harsh a judgement? Consider this: The treaty would create a beast called the International Seabed Development Authority which would exercise virtually total control over mining licenses and charge payments for that mining in the form of profits technology and the minerals them- selves. - Weuif,vou have found the recerj : policies and ideologies which have tea i; emanating from the United Natiod i hard to digest, wait until you see hoi::': this seagoing U.N. would maid decisions on dividing the booty ow.-.j. which it would be given control. At th -beginning, the United States would m be guaranteed a vote on the counci which would dispense mining permits .. But the Soviet bloc would get three, anC. the remaining votes would be heldbf ' the same Third World coalition whid now controls the U.N. And as council membership rotates, the Units States still would not be guaranteed i -vote. " ; Do you think an authority of thi ideological complexion is going tola ";; much sleep over concern about tb interests of the American people an;-; the American business community' Fat chance! Few people dispute the need for son ; form of international agreement covering the mining of the seabed ; Industry would welcome the secunt, that a properly devised agreement-would agreement-would give to their long-term investments, in-vestments, but the present treaty fail-to fail-to recognize that the risk, the investment in-vestment and the technologies ingenuity it takes to get these precoo.-. resources out of the seas or out of n . ground are just as important as ur natural resources themselves, w , without the other leaves us nowk And nowhere is where we will be " current treaty is ratified and busina -is forced to make the judgement iw mining of the seabed under Uwm .(-conditions .(-conditions is just not worth the rw-- It's time to go back to thedrart ;; board. a i s - V |