this imaginative project. We see no possible net strategic benefit, but only new burdens and dangers, in the superpower naval arms race that now looms in the Indian Ocean. We urge our government to take a more positive attitude toward the Indian Ocean Zone of Peace in concert with the other nuclear powers, and as part of this process to reconsider development of a major US base on the island of Diego Garcia.

We urge our government to participate in the preparatory discussions for a World Disarmament Conference which may prove valuable at the proper time as a way to include China in disarmament negotiations. We believe the US should be present this year at the meetings of the Ad Hoc Committee on a World Disarmament Conference.

Finally, we urge the US government to keep in mind that it has joined with other governments in the United Nations in designating the 1970s as the Decade of Disarmament.

7. ECONOMIC PROBLEMS

Never have international economic problems been more central to United Nations debate, or a greater source of tension among the members. This tension is not in itself a sign of weakness or wrong headedness; it is rather a sign that the world community, with the inadequate institutions available to it, is wrestling with social and economic changes of extraordinary scope and complexity. Among those changes are:

Uncontrolled inflation, with consequent trade and currency dislocations, resulting from a generation of rapid (and often prodigally wasteful) economic growth in industrial and industrializing areas.

Unprecedented world population growth, most rapid in poor countries, reaching doubling periods as short as 21 years in some cases.

Rising pressure on a finite world resource base of fuels, minerals, arable land and fisheries-increasing human vulnerability to famine and economic or environmental disasters.

Finally, a growing capability of resource-rich developing countries to control the production, volume and export prices of their resources, especially oil—and to use the resulting international leverage for their own advantage.

From these changes have flowed sudden-and, without a doubt, lasting— changes in the world economic and political landscape. The spectacular flow of money to the oil-exporting countries since 1973 has multiplied overnight their influence on world events. It has correspondingly multiplied their responsibility. They will increasingly feel pressure not only to accommodate their interests with those of the major oil-consuming countries, but also to respond to appeals from resource-poor developing countries for relief from skyrocketing oil prices, hunger and economic stagnation. We of the United States and other industrial powers, ourselves now hard-pressed to fulfill past commitments to international development, should urge these newly affluent states to accept their full responsibility in the emerging global partnership. They should be encouraged to accept their due share of both the privileges and the burdens of international economic leadership, including support for the development and humanitarian programs of the United Nations system. These programs should become an important channel for recycling petrodollars to developing countries most in need.

For our part, we of the United States, despite our current domestic troubles, must continue to carry major global economic responsibilities. This means, among other things, continuing support for the tested institutions of the UN system that serve the needs of developing countries: the World Bank and Fund, the regional development banks, the UN Development Program, and the family of UN Specialized Agencies which collaborate in development projects. It also means supporting new institutional arrangements, such as the special $6 billion lending facility set up by the International Monetary Fund to channel assistance from both the developed and the newly-rich states to the developing countries hardest hit by the economic crisis.

US development assistance in 1974 was at its lowest level since World War II-approximately one quarter of one percent of our gross national product, including bilateral programs most of which support specific US political or strategic objectives. We urge that these trends be reversed, and that a greater share of US development aid be channeled through the multilateral agencies of the UN system. We deplore the action of Congress in rejecting the President's request for a $29 million increase in appropriations to international organizations in 1975. We also deplore the severe cuts made by Congress in appropriations

for specific UN programs, including the UN Development Program. Where UN delivery systems are felt to be insufficiently effective, US policy should be to increase their effectiveness-not to point to their defects as an excuse for diminished support.

In addition, this country has an important stake in resolving a wide range of new and old economic issues affecting the developing nations. Some slow but solid progress has been achieved, especially toward monetary and trade accords with developing countries. But much more remains to be decided: on emergency food aid and aid to developing countries hit by the oil crisis; and, in the longer-term development context, on capital flows, prices of commodities and manufacturers in world trade, nonreciprocal tariff preferences for developing countries without crippling exceptions, technology transfer, and the role of private capital.

The United Nations has yet to produce a viable consensus among nations on this huge problem area. Neither in the International Development Strategy of 1970 nor in the New Economic Order resolutions of May 1, 1974 despite the formal consensus on both-did the General Assembly really bridge the gulf of divergent interests and priorities between the industrial nations and the aspiring Third World.

A new attempt to narrow that gulf will be made at the Assembly's brief special session on economic questions scheduled to convene next September 1. The United States cannot afford to hang back again from serious negotiation, as we did before and during the special session last spring. The longer we do so, the more likely it is that anti-Western influences will predominate in the resource, trade, and investment policies of Third World countries. We urge our Government to carry its proper share of leadership in preparing for the coming special session—a major opportunity to begin serious negotiation for a new economic system acceptable to all concerned, and adequate for the world we live in. As part of this process, we endorse current UN efforts to deal constructively with relations between multinational enterprises and developing countries, and urge that a code of conduct be written applicable to both.

The new partnership which we envisage at the UN will not be built in a day or a year. It may involve the creation of new UN institutions strong enough to achieve more rational and less contentious management of scarce world resources. Until it begins to take shape, economic discord will continue to hamper and distract all attempts to frame solutions for the fundamental long-term world problems of international order, arms control, and human environment, overpopulation, resources, and the future quality of human life.

8. FOOD, POPULATION AND ENVIRONMENT

Among recent United Nations actions which are likely to live in history are three pioneering world conferences of governments on the emergent human problems of the environment (1972), population, and food (1974). Global cooperation in these three overlapping areas is troubled by much the same north-south tensions and frustrations that afflict the entire movement for international economic development. Yet despite these troubles some important steps have been taken, and new steps are urgently necessary.

Food

Hunger is among the most pressing problems in the world today. The U.S., as a principal food producer and world leader, must accept a major responsibility for its solution. We applaud our government's initiative in proposing the World Food Conference, held last November in Rome. The World Food Council, whose creation the conference recommended, has now been established as a new organ of the United Nations. It is a first step toward systematic global cooperation on long-term food problems which, if further neglected or mishandled, will threaten development and even survival in large parts of the world.

Since the hundreds of millions of people now threatened with starvation and crippling nutritional diseases cannot wait for a coordinated long-term solution, we are pleased to note also that the U.S. has announced a food aid program for this fiscal year of $1.6 billion, at least 70 percent of which must go to nations designated by the UN as most in need.

It is vitally important that our government continue to contribute its share of resources and leadership in this cause. The next steps to which Washington should urgently address itself are these:

US development assistance policies and programs, both bilateral and multilateral, and especially through UN self-help technical assistance programs, should give major new emphasis, in line with the recommendations of the Rome Conference, to building up the capacity of developing countries to produce their own food.

The US should play its full part in the effort, also emphasized by the Rome Conference, to achieve world food security, especially by the creation of adequate national and international food reserves.

Since vast quantities of agricultural acreage and basic protein crops are used for the production of meat, alcohol and tobacco, we urge that the US Government provide economic incentives to farmers to reduce such usage and increase poultry and basic protein production.

Population

The World Population Conference in Bucharest in August 1974 gave important new impetus to efforts for more rational population policies and programs throughout the world. The "World Population Plan of Action," despite inevitable compromises, is a major advance toward a world consensus on key points: the interdependence between family planning and development; the right of parents to decide the number of their children; the active role of women in development; the value of numerical targets for reduction of population growth rates; and the need for increased international aid to countries seeking to improve their population programs. The General Assembly last fall substantially endorsed the Bucharest recommendations and called for their implementation, including further expansion of the UN Fund for Population Activities. In addition, the World Food Conference stressed the need for a balance between food resources and population.

We commend our government for its constructive role in this work and urge that it give continued high priority to implementing steps. Environment

The 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, and the subsequent creation of the UN Environment Program and Fund, were landmark achievements of the world community in enabling technological man to collaborate more wisely with his natural environment. Particularly important were the launching of the "Earthwatch" program of global research and monitoring of pollutants, and the increased commitment by developing countries to development policies that give adequate weight to environmental protection.

From the outset, these achievements were flawed by a suspicion among developing countries that the environment movement, originating in the industrial West, was "anti-development." To help allay this suspicion, the mandate given to UNEP struck a careful balance between global environmental concerns and those of special concern to developing countries. Ever since, pressure from the developing country majority has tended to upset this balance and to focus the great bulk of UNEP's still very limited program on development-related projects. Such an unbalanced program, though by no means valueless, carries an inherent risk that the US and other developed countries may lose interest in UNEP and seek auspices outside the UN for global environmental management programs such as Earthwatch. We urge our government to resist this temptation and persist in seeking common ground with the majority.

That this uniquely important venture in world cooperation should be thus endangered in its infancy is a measure of how far the West and the Third World still are from reconciling their widely differing priorities. This situation again illustrates the fundamental need, discussed early in these pages, for a new dialogue in the UN leading to a better working relationship between the West and the Third World. We further note that global efforts to slow the degradation of the earth's life support resources-air, water and land-cannot be fully effective until major industrial powers, including the U.S., act to diminish pollution within their own borders. We urge that the U.S. reduce pollution from fossil fuel and nuclear energy sources and speed conversion to non-polluting energy sources, such as solar, geothermal, wind and tidal.

9. LAW OF THE SEA

Eight years ago the General Assembly addressed itself to the need for modernizing international law governing man's activity on and beneath the oceansmore than two-thirds of the earth's surface whose fish, petroleum and mineral

resources are increasingly accessible to advancing technology. From this concern came plans for a new UN Conference on the Law of the Sea. Through years of preparations its agenda steadily widened to include issues of territorial limits; rights of passage through straits; use and conservation of fisheries; rights of landlocked countries; international rules, machinery and fees governing economic exploitation of the seabed; control of marine pollution; scientific research; procedures for settling disputes; etc.

For two months in 1974, the 148-nation conference held its first negotiating session in Caracas. A further (though probably not final) negotiating session is now under way in Geneva.

The conference's broad agenda and near-universal participation made for an extremely complex pattern of alignments and negotiating pressures. The Caracas session succeeded in identifying the key issues and sorting out the major proposals. The crucial bargaining stage has now arrived. At this point two main dangers threaten the conference's ultimate success.

One danger arises from conflicting national pressures. Most developing countries press for the widest and most exclusive national coastal zone, and for strict international control in the common realm. The major powers press for unrestricted military and commercial transit through straits, narrower and less exclusive coastal jurisdiction, and (in the case of the U.S. especially) the least burdensome international regulation over seabed exploitation in the common realm. On fisheries, most nations are most interested in shares of the catch than in conservation of threatened species.

The danger is that the conference, in reconciling these conflicts, will neglect the global interest and set the stage for an unregulated international free-for-all to exploit marine species and seabed wealth while they last. Such an outcome entails unacceptable threats to the marine environment and to international order.

The second danger reinforces the first. It arises from commercial and industrial pressures on Congress, some of them already embodied in pending legislation. These, if allowed to prevail, would pre-empt for U.S. fishing and mining interests various unrestricted rights of exploitation which the conference still has a chance to subject and ought to subject-to international regulation as regards pollution, overfishing, international royalties, and the equitable distribution of benefits. The central task for the Law of the Sea Conference is to build an international regime, sturdy and durable enough to protect mankind's common heritage of the sea and assure that the uses of this vast realm are fairly shared. This effort is an unprecedented test of how well our world of nations can function as a community. Only strong leadership can prevent the long-term interest of all from being pulled apart in an unseemly scramble to maximize the special advantage of each.

We urge our government to provide its share of that leadership at this critical point; to resist short-sighted pressures at home; and to insist upon a strong world legal order for the oceans-one that will be equitable to diverse national interests without slighting the enduring interests of all people.

10. OUTER SPACE

For nearly 15 years the UN, through the General Assembly's Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, has sought to assure that pioneering exploits of the space age would visibly benefit not only the few advanced space powers but all nations. Potential or actual benefits have appeared in such fields as communications, mapping, navigation, weather forecasting, and most recently in the development by the US of a powerful new tool, remote sensing by satellite, to gain information on natural resources and the environment.

Two broad issues have arisen over the years in this field.

First is an organizational issue: Shall the US and other space powers use multilateral channels such as the UN for their technical aid to developing countries in the field of outer space, or shall these benefits be channeled bilaterally? We believe the US, presumably for the sake of political or strategic influence, has thus far given undue stress to its own bilateral space cooperation programs at the expense of the UN. This has been especially evident in the US attitude toward the work carried on under the Outer Space Committee. The US, in concert with other states, should call on the UN to stop starving the diminutive "space applications program" in the UN Secretariat and should move to enhance both its budget and its staff capabilities as a source of guidance and training for developing countries. In the same spirit we support the declared willingness of the US to provide remote sensing data to global or regional data distribution

centers that may be established under UN auspices; and we urge that the US work energetically for the establishment of such centers. These steps could be a valuable signal that the US is moving-as recommended at the outset of this statement-to give a higher priority to its relations with the UN and to the needs of the Third World.

Second is a legal issue: Shall space technology be used to promote the free flow of information and knowledge among nations, or shall its use be restricted by traditional concepts of national sovereignty? This issue has been raised with regard both to remote sensing and to the anticipated technology of direct international TV broadcasting to home receivers.

The two situations are not the same. In the case of remote sensing, some countries such as Argentina and Brazil want to make the dissemination of such data subject to the consent of the "sensed" country. The US holds, and we agree, that such a doctrine could severely hamper the practical use of this highly important technology. The best way to assure that remote sensing information is used effectively and fairly is to make it available to all-including, of course, the “sensed" countries. Such a policy has been wisely applied by the US from the outset to the data from its first two satellites of this type, Landsat 1 and 2. The international data distribution centers mentioned above should be established on the same principle.

A quite different issue arises in connection with the international broadcasting of TV programs to home receivers, a technology which is likely to become practical within the next decade. The Soviet Union has urged in the General Assembly a highly restrictive doctrine-even more restrictive than that adopted earlier by UNESCO-under which states could act unilaterally to exclude such broadcasts. The US initially replied with a "freedom of information" position which seemed to some observers even more absolute than the very liberal broadcast licensing laws of our country. Recently, however, US spokesmen have indicated willingness to assure respect for each country's cultural integrity. We agree with this modification of the concept. We do not believe that the cause of freedom of information would be served by insisting on the right to broadcast any TV program to any receiver in the world. The great principle can be better served in the international sphere by harmonizing it with the views and felt needs of other nations.

In this quest serious consideration should be given to the longer-range possibility of the UN itself operating a world television satellite broadcasting system for the dissemination of UN information and for non-political broadcasts by member states.

11. HUMAN RIGHTS

The argument that action on human rights falls within the domestic jurisdiction of member states has limited the potential of the UN for advancing the ideals of the Charter in this field. A growing majority of members do not assign a high priority to the civil and political rights of individuals so highly valued in the West; many, indeed, see in the spread of these rights a threat to their own power. Instead, the majority in the Human Rights Commission and the General Assembly have increasingly laid primary emphasis on the collective rights and grievances of whole nations, or of particular racial, ethnic or political categories. This tendency, first embodied in the Genocide Convention of 1948, has found more recent expression in the Convention on Racial Discrimination (1965), the Convention Against Apartheid (1973), and a steady stream of UN resolutions demanding the right of self-determination for peoples still in colonial or racial subjection.

By contrast, Western efforts to revive interest in conventions or declarations on traditional civil and political rights, notably freedom of information and freedom of religion, have encountered indifference from most members. Moreover, the majority has found it politically convenient to be highly selective in its attention to human rights violations--and in its interpretation of the domestic jurisdiction clause.

In this situation the United States and other Western members have persisted in advocating human rights projects or institutional reforms in keeping with Western concepts. One of these, the proposal to establish a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as an international ombudsman in the field, has failed to be endorsed by the Assembly. Another, an effort to have the Human Rights Commission deal with non-governmental complaints has had some modest procedural success but may require years to yield practical results.