Will Senator Mcconnell Take On The U.N.'S Seasick Lawyers?
By Cliff Kincaid
September 17, 2007
America celebrates Constitution Day on Monday, September 17, as we find members of the Bush Administration and liberals in the Senate working feverishly to get the U.S. involved in another international treaty, the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This pact, which would further erode the sovereignty and independence of our nation, authorizes foreign bodies and judges to decide our fate on the oceans, determining who gets access to vast deposits of oil and gas and precious minerals. A Senate vote on this pact is coming up soon, perhaps by the end of this month.
As I have been reviewing the history and text of the 202-page treaty document and the forces behind it, I have been amazed to discover that not only is the current Legal Adviser to the U.S. State Department, John B. Bellinger III, pushing it, but that eight former Legal Advisers have endorsed it. This sounds impressive, except when you consider that their arguments in favor of the treaty are full of obvious distortions.
Permit me to state that I am not a lawyer. But I can read and write. And I know what words mean.
The eight former Legal Advisers endorsed the treaty in a letter that was released by Senator Richard Lugar, a Republican supporter of UNCLOS, in 2004, when the pact was also up for Senate consideration. Fortunately, then-Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist stopped the treaty from coming up for a full Senate vote, arguing that its flaws needed to be studied, exposed and corrected. Senator James Inhofe led the campaign against it. Current Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky hasn't taken a position on UNCLOS.
One of the most significant and remarkable assertions by the former Legal Advisers is that UNCLOS has nothing to do with the U.N. Indeed, they refer to it as LOS, rather than UNCLOS, its official acronym. A similar tack has been taken by current Legal Adviser John B. Bellinger III, who has been trying to sell conservatives on the pact. His sales pitch is falling flat.
The desire to keep people from finding out about the U.N. connection to UNCLOS is understandable since the world body has a notorious reputation for corruption and incompetence.
The former Legal Advisers state that "...the LOS Convention does not award any decision-making authority on any issue to the United Nations. The fact that the term 'United Nations' appears in the title of the LOS Convention is legally meaningless and is an accident of history."
This claim, made by eight prominent legal authorities who served our government in the highest reaches of the State Department, deserves scrutiny. It turns out that the preamble to UNCLOS alone has three references to the United Nations. First, it refers to UNCLOS as emerging from a United Nations conference. Second, it refers to UNCLOS being based on a resolution passed by the United Nations General Assembly. Finally, it declares that the treaty shall be implemented "in accordance with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations as set forth in the Charter."
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