An interpretation of the Geneva proceedings—part I

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Abstract
This interpretation of the second substantive session of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea is based on observations of the Plenary, General Committee, Committees I, II, and III, and their Working Groups from 7 April to 9 May 1975 in Geneva. The observations are supplemented with information derived in multiple interviews with sixty‐seven delegates from twenty‐nine delegations. Part I of the paper describes general characteristics of the Geneva negotiations and compares them with the first round of substantive negotiations held in Caracas in 1974. There was much less rhetoric used in Geneva as compared to Caracas, especially in Committee I. Also in Committee I, the Algerian delegation succeeded within the Group of 77 in their initiative to link the seabed issue with the problem of control over global commodities in the context of claims to establish a New Economic Order. The negotiations in Committee II were seriously affected by the absence of effective leadership and the proliferation of small negotiating groups without links between them. Moreover, within Committee II the tension between the coastal states and the “Disadvantaged Group”; within the Group of 77 increased almost to the point of rupture. As negotiations proceeded in Committee I, the gap between the advanced industrial countries and the Group of 77 widened on a number of crucial issues. This gap increased to the point where delegates from the Group of 77 were privately arguing that the seabed issue had been added to the issue of the Economic Zone as the price for the major maritime countries securing their preferences on the issue of unimpeded passage through straits used for international navigation. The Informal Single Negotiating Text, Part I, which was distributed at the end of the Geneva session, was different in several important respects from the text on which a consensus had been privately negotiated. This stimulated the expression of views within the delegations of several advanced industrial countries that the price of agreement on a treaty was currently too high.

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