386. Telegram From the Embassy in Canada to the Department of State1
339. From Dean. Reported Canadian Secretary External Affairs results London negotiations and stated UK and western Europeans considering whether they could accept some phase out proposal in addition to 6 mile territorial sea and 6 mile exclusive fishing zone for coastal state and that without their cooperation and with 18 Soviet-Arab votes against US with possible maximum of 89, we did not see how Canadian proposal of straight 6 plus 6 [with?] bilaterals could get necessary two-thirds. Stated we understood their and our defense people were in complete agreement on absolute necessity maintain maximum territorial sea of 6 miles.
They are apparently leading group of smaller states including Iceland, Denmark and Norway and Asian-African states some of whom they insist will not vote for any proposal which recognizes existence of historic or traditional fishing rights in exclusive fishing zone but are willing to negotiate bilateral agreements in good faith if the formula itself terminates the historic or traditional fishing rights. We pointed out great difficulty politically for nations to vote for formula which completely terminated their fishing rights without knowing specifically what they could get in return, whether agreement could be reached on bilateral and whether bilaterals would be ratified. They appear to believe they can split western Europeans and get some for their formula and while they did not claim that their formula would necessarily get two-thirds vote they insisted that they thought it [Page 741] had a better chance than ours. Quite apparent they are leaders of this bloc and have done considerable work lining up nations for their formula and are not willing at this point to abandon this leadership.
Pointed out we both were in agreement on absolute necessity on getting successful formula which would maintain territorial sea with maximum 6 miles, that our formula would give them in substance everything that they wanted without litigation and even assuming that they got two-thirds without acquiescence commercial fishing states they might still have long period of litigation and disagreement among allies.
They asked if we were still willing to attempt negotiate bilateral on phase out period with straight 6 plus 6 formula and we answered that we could not at this point. Said we wished to continue to work very closely with them and to continue exchange views. Believe they might come to our formula at conference as fallback but are not prepared to do so now.
- Source: Department State, Central Files, 399.731/11–2759. Confidential. Received November 28, 3:06 a.m.↩