Richardson Speech

"Among the problems facing you and your generation, there is not one that the United States will be able to deal with alone or with just a few friends," Eliot Richardson '41, special representative of the President to the Law of the Sea Conference, said yesterday.

The establishment of regulations governing the world's oceans by the Law of the Sea Conference shows that it is possible for an international forum to resolve problems and address questions by consensus, Richardson said.

Speaking at the Law School before an audience of about 75, Richardson, Attorney General during the Nixon administration, said that the conference was the "biggest, longest, most complicated, most ambitious law-making body ever convened."

The conference resulted in a 200-page document which "deals with everything you have ever thought of regarding the oceans," including a tax code for deep sea mining, provisions for profit sharing, transfer of technology, and restriction of deep sea mining, Richardson said. The treaty will have to be ratified by 60 countries before it goes into effect, he added.

Richardson said he does not expect the treaty to come before Congress until 1985.