The Three-Mile Limit

Of all the disagreements that plague nations, few are quite so exasperating as the question: How far out to sea can a country claim territorial jurisdiction? When the 1930 Hague Codification Conference failed to find an answer, the world was left with a crazy-quilt situation in which some nations claimed a three-mile territorial sea limit, others claimed four, six, ten, twelve, 200, or all the water covering the continental shelf. Last week in Geneva an 86-nation U.N Law of the Sea Conference finished more than two months of meetings on the subject, and put the question to a vote.

The U.S. entered the conference determined to stick by the traditional three-mile limit, first suggested by a Dutch scholar back in 1703 when that distance was about the maximum range of a cannon. Though cannon range is no longer a criterion, the U.S. still has powerful reasons for not wanting to see nations stretch their territorial claims farther and thus shrink by hundreds of thousands of miles the great body of water known as the High Seas. For one thing, argued U.S. Delegate Arthur Dean (Korean armistice negotiator and onetime law partner of John Foster Dulles), enemy submarines can find easier sanctuary in extended and therefore deeper territorial seas. Furthermore, the elimination of the three-mile limit would abolish the. free channels through such narrow bodies of water as the Strait of Gibraltar (7.75 miles wide at its narrowest point), could seriously hamper friendly naval movement between the islands of Indonesia. To the newer nations of the world, such arguments carried no weight at all.

"Extraordinary Sacrifices." Indonesia came out for a twelve-mile territorial sea limit. So did Saudi Arabia and the United

Arab Republic (Egypt-Syria). Britain, whose North Sea fishing trawlers are a major industry, decided to abandon the three-mile limit in favor of a maximum of six, hoping thereby to avoid the threat of twelve, which would seriously jeopardize its fishing close to the coasts of Iceland, Norway and Greenland. Canada proposed a six-mile limit for national sovereignty, plus another six miles of exclusive fishing (a notion that horrified Britain). The Soviet Union, which has little at stake for itself in the issue, made propaganda hay by championing the smaller nations' twelve-mile proposals.

Fearful that twelve miles might win, the U.S. finally agreed to turn its face from 165 years of tradition, and offered to compromise on a six-mile territorial sea limit, plus an additional six-mile fishing zone, with the proviso that any foreign nation that "regularly for the period of five years" had been fishing in that zone should be allowed to continue. This, said Arthur Dean, represented "extraordinary sacrifices" by the U.S., but "those who came here believing in the straight twelve-mile limit have not budged an inch."

Chaos, Contd. Britain backed the compromise, but Canada did not. Last week, in full plenary session, Canada's proposal of a twelve-mile exclusive fishing zone was defeated. A Russian twelve-mile territorial sea proposal mustered only 21 ayes to 47 nays. The closest to come to victory, with 45 votes for and 33 against, was the U.S. proposal, but it still fell seven votes short of the necessary two-thirds majority. In disgust the meeting gave up.

The whole chaotic mess was right back where the Hague conference left it 28 years ago: each nation could declare its own limit, and enforce it if it could. Said Arthur Dean for the U.S.: "We stand on the three-mile limit; we will continue to do so, and we will not recognize any unilateral extension beyond that limit."

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