Why U.N.'s Sea Treaty Is So Controversial

Why U.N.'s Sea Treaty Is So Controversial

Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Monday, March 22, 2004

WASHINGTON – A leading critic of the controversial Law of the Sea Treaty is scheduled to testify Tuesday before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Frank Gaffney Jr., president and CEO of the Center for Security Policy, is well-versed on the treaty, whose acronym is LOST, a word that describes what many concerned Americans would like to see happen to it.

This is the second committee to consider LOST. The hearing comes on the heels of a quiet approval Feb. 25 by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, under chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of Environment and Public Works, believes all sides should be heard on the treaty, given that its far-reaching provisions could affect the lives of millions of Americans.

In an interview with NewMax.com and in a written summary, Gaffney, who held several high positions in the Reagan administration, which rejected the treaty, has listed five major reasons why LOST should be lost. They all revolve around powers the treaty bestows on a newly created International Seabed Authority:

1. The power to regulate seven-tenths of the world’s surface area.

2. The power to levy international taxes, a longtime dream of world government advocates.

3. The power to impose production quotas (for deep-sea mining, oil production, etc.).

4. The power to regulate ocean research and exploration.

5. The power to create an international court system to render and enforce its judgments.

Syndicated columnist Phyllis Schlafly writes that LOST “is a trap that would compel the United States to pay billions of private-enterprise dollars to an international authority while socialist, anti-American nations harvest the profit. Its international control and regulation would deny U.S. companies access to the strategic ocean minerals that we need for our industries and military defense.”

“Rip-off powers” abound in International Seabed Authority, Schlafly warns. The globalist bureaucracy could impose tough production caps, potentially further limiting the self-sufficiency of the U.S.

Schlafly quotes people who spoke to the president as saying he is actually opposed to LOST. That dovetails with NewsMax’s information from other sources that gives us good reason to believe that President Bush, at the very least, does not consider treaty ratification a high priority.

Gaffney does cite Vice President Dick Cheney as a supporter of LOST.

One of the other witnesses to testify before Inhofe’s committee is the State Department’s John F. Turner, assistant secretary of the Bureau of Oceans and International Affairs.

Gaffney will appear on a panel with Paul V Kelly, member, U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy; Bernard Oxman, professor of law at the University of Miami; and Peter Leitner, author of “Reforming the Law of the Sea Treaty. Opportunities Missed, Precedents Set and U.S. Sovereignty Threatened."

NewsMax plans to attend the hearing.

Editor's note:

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