Saudi Arabia made a new attempt today to prevent adoption of an international maritime law which would interfere with her plans to blockade Israel’s use of the Gulf of Akaba.
The Saudi Arabian delegate proposed to the 87-nation international maritime parley that it admit failure to achieve agreement on the breadth of territorial waters and the sovereign rights of coastal states in relation to such limitations. He added that the parley should record its failure to agree and then refer the matter to United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold for his study and recommendation on a solution.
For itself, Saudi Arabia reaffirmed its insistence on the 12-mile limit, a move in which she has the backing of the Soviet Union whose position is that each state has the right to set such limits for the waters touching its shores. The United States maintains its traditional stand in favor of the three mile limit, while Britain, Canada and even Israel favor a six mile extension of sovereignty.
Israel, however, insists that straits from the high seas to a coastal port–like Elath at the head of the Gulf of Akaba–may not be closed to innocent shipping regardless of the width of the strait. In this Israel received the support of a committee of the conference and has yet to win the necessary two-thirds majority in a plenary session.
Meanwhile, a joint Indian-Mexican resolution calling for extension of the limits of territorial coastal waters 12 miles out to sea, but allowing each state to set its own limits within that overall distance, was proposed yesterday. Introducing the joint resolution, Indian Minister of Law M. Sen. told the committee that he was presenting the point of view of many smaller nations which differed with large power insistence on shorter distances within which a state would have sovereign control of passage.
At the same time, a committee of the conference, by a vote of 59 to one, with ten abstentions, adopted an article declaring that a coastal state “must not hamper innocent passage through the territorial sea.” It is this principle which Israel has sought to have upheld in its fight for keeping open the Gulf of Akaba. The committee, which adopted three specific articles yesterday regulating the territorial sea, dropped at United States insistence, a clause which would have held a coastal nation responsible for insuring respect for the right of innocent passage.
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