PROGRESS REPORTED ON SEABED MINING CODE

Press Release
SEA/1545

PROGRESS REPORTED ON SEABED MINING CODE

(Received from the International Seabed Authority.)

KINGSTON, 24 March -- Considerable progress on a code for mining in the international seabed area was reported this afternoon to the Council of the International Seabed Authority, meeting at Kingston.

The observation was made in an oral report by Jean-Pierre Lenoble (France), the Chairman of the Legal and Technical Commission, which has been meeting behind closed doors since 18 March to draw up rules, regulations and procedures for the conduct of activities in the international seabed area, beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.

Making his first report on the nine meetings held by his Commission, Mr. Lenoble informed the Council that the Commission had completed the first reading of 33 out of the 42 regulations included in the draft by the secretariat, and planned to complete the first reading of all the regulations today. He also noted that there had been agreement in the Commission in relation to 23 regulations out of the 33 already considered, with the remaining 10 requiring further review.

In his brief preliminary report, Mr. Lenoble did not give details of substantive changes made to the document by the Commission, but said that a more comprehensive report on the work of the Commission would be provided to the Council on Thursday, 27 March -- the final day of the current part of the session. He added that the Commission planned to complete its review of the draft by then, so that the Council could complete its review of the text at its next set of meetings in August, also in Kingston.

The drafting of a mining code for the deep seabed is high on the agenda of the current session of the Authority. Those regulations will lay down the terms under which States and mining companies, including the mining arm of the Authority, the Enterprise, will be able to carry out prospecting and exploration in the seabed area beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.

The draft regulations are based on work done between 1985 and 1993 in Special Commission 3 of the Preparatory Commission for the International

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Seabed Authority and for the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea, as well as on the two basic treaties defining the function of the Authority -- the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the 1994 Implementation Agreement.

In a brief discussion, the Indonesian representative said that in view of the imbalance of membership on the Commission there should be exhaustive discussions on the draft regulations to ensure that the interests of the Authority were represented. The Council is composed of 36 members in five groups. However, he noted, there were no representatives on the 22-member Commission from Group C (Australia, Chile, Indonesia and Zambia) -- countries that are major land-based exporters of minerals found on the deep seabed. The representative of India, while observing that the imbalance was not the fault of any group, said his delegation was confident that the Commission's members would make evaluations based on their professional expertise rather than on political considerations.

On another matter, the President of the Council, Lennox Ballah (Trinidad and Tobago), reported that a small working group established last week to address certain difficulties related to the Headquarters Agreement between the Authority and the Government of Jamaica had still not completed its work. He expressed confidence however that the few outstanding points would be settled before the next Council meeting.

The representative of the Sudan circulated a document suggesting the need for a closer examination of article 48, on the settlement of disputes relating to the Headquarters Agreement. He said that the article did not deal with the issue in a comprehensive manner and cautioned that that flaw might lead to arbitration difficulties in the future.

The representative of Poland, while acknowledging the validity of the input by the representative of the Sudan, asked the Council to consider which court would have jurisdiction in those matters, noting that neither the International Court of Justice nor the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea would be competent.

The Council will meet again at 11:30 a.m. tomorrow, 25 March, when the Headquarters Agreement will again be taken up.

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