The UN’s International Seabed Authority (ISA) was set up to control development of the worlds undersea minerals resources within international waters. It has been a complete failure to date.

The Seabed Authority is in disarray having come under relentless attack for not protecting the rights of humanity from encroachments like that planned in the Arctic Commons by Russia.

There are increasing calls for the disbandment of the seabed authority in its current form so as to allow private enterprise to take over the oceans minerals development.

Free enterprise is responsible for all the worlds shipping, cruise lines and fishing which moves 95% of the world’s products and feeds millions of people. The UN has no business interfering there.

ISA treaty should be abrogated as it is without customary legal foundation and plainly wrong.

As a non signing state party to the convention the US is not currently bound by any of LOST’s absurd rules, and so it should remain.

The carrot of US access to the estimated 400 billion barrels of arctic oil and gas being dangled in front of the senate is completely bogus. Article 76 of the law also allows countries to extend their submarine claims beyond the 200-mile limit only if they can provide solid scientific evidence that the continental shelf under their territory extends beneath the ocean beyond 200 miles. If the US signs LOST it will not gain any of the arctic oil as LOST rules preclude any claim extension beyond the Alaska 200 mile zone as the US continental shelf only extends an average of 50-100 miles from shore.

A US company (see; http://www.unoilgas.com )made a solid hydrocarbons rights claim to the Arctic Oceans Commons under customary international law on May 9th 2006. This claim gives the US priority over developing the Arctic oil and gas resources with or without LOST.

When President Reagan decided not to sign the Convention in 1982 he left a door open for the future. He identified six criteria that he said had to be met, and if they were, he would support US joining the Convention. After nearly eight years, during which it became clear that all parties lost something with the US being outside the agreement, the US was approached by representatives of both developing and developed countries that had signed the Convention. They said that they thought a solution was possible and that the Reagan criteria could be met.

Consultations began in 1990, becoming formal negotiations in 1993 and the modifications became a binding multilateral convention bound to the original convention in 1994. Tremendous concessions were made by parties that has supported the convention in 1982 and had opposed exactly the concessions made in 1994 to gain US acceptance.

Now, thirteen years later, the United States still hasn’t accepted the victory offered on a silver platter in 1994. If the US cannot accept the renegotiation of the LOS Convention with a result that met the strict criteria set by Ronald Reagan and a convention overwhelming in US interests, how can future US negotiators hope to obtain concessions on other existing agreements (e.g. the International Criminal Court) or to gain the most difficult concessions in a negotiation on a future issue. International negotiations, particuarly multilatreral ones, rely on trust in reaching agreement. As long as the US fails to live up to President Reagan’s commitment, trust in the US as a negotiating party will be reduced.