Conservatives Mobilize Against 'Law of the Sea' Treaty

For those keeping score, this is why I'm not a blind supporter of the Bush administration. When they do something I approve of, I write it, when they don't, I complain about it. This from the NY Sun.

"WASHINGTON - Conservative activists are pressing the Bush administration and Republican lawmakers to reverse their support for an international oceans treaty they claim will limit American sovereignty and empower an international body akin to the United Nations.

They want President Bush to repudiate a treaty called the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, just as he pulled America out of an agreement creating the International Criminal Court and has refused to sign the Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gas emissions. The White House says it wants to see the treaty ratified soon.

Although the oceans treaty may be obscure, it is stirring intense passions among conservatives who see it as internationalism's latest encroachment on American sovereignty.

The treaty has created "another unaccountable, politicized multilateral tribunal," said the president of the Center for Security Policy, Frank Gaffney. The treaty, which came into force in 1994 and has been signed by 148 countries, created an International Seabed Authority to oversee extraction of resources from the seabed. The authority has an assembly, a council, and a secretariat; an International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea was also created to resolve disputes.

More than a dozen groups that helped elect the Republican majority in Congress plan to flex their political muscle during a press conference Friday and denounce the treaty during the three-day Conservative Political Action Conference, which bills itself as the largest annual gathering of conservative grassroots activists from around the country."

Newsmax.com appears to one of the forces leading the charge against the "Land of the Sea Treaty (LOST)". They write:

"U.S. adherence to this treaty would entail history's biggest and most unwarranted voluntary transfer of wealth AND surrender of sovereignty. LOST, which was a product of the Left/Soviet/non-aligned movement agenda of the 1960s and 1970s, created the International Seabed Authority (ISA). ISA is a new supranational organization with unprecedented powers:

The power to regulate seven-tenths of the world's surface area;
The power to levy international taxes;
The power to impose production quotas (for deep-sea mining, oil production, etc.);
The power to regulate ocean research and exploration;
The power to create a multinational court system to render and enforce its judgments!

U.S. national security interests will be severely undermined by several of the Treaty's provisions:

The sorts of at-sea interdiction efforts central to President Bush's new "Proliferation Security Initiative" (PSI) would be prohibited. Communist China has already been citing the Treaty to object to PSI maritime interdiction and boarding of vessels suspected of weapons of mass destruction or terrorism ties;

The treaty effectively prohibits two functions vital to American security: intelligence-collection in, and submerged transit of, territorial waters; 

Mandatory information-sharing will afford U.S. enemies data that could be used to facilitate attacks on this country (for example, detailed imagery of underwater access routes and off-shore hiding places); 

Obligatory technology transfers will equip actual or potential adversaries with sensitive and militarily useful equipment and know-how (such as anti-submarine warfare technology).

The Treaty fails to address, let alone offer solutions to, the most dangerous flashpoints for military conflict facing the world. In fact, Communist China is using its own "unique" interpretation of this Treaty to justify its assertion of control over the strategic South China Sea!

LOST is a prime example of the way left-wing Democrats would like the world to be ordered and run. It is NOT consistent with conservative Republican governing principles and values -- or, more importantly, this country's VITAL INTERESTS."

You'd think that President Bush, who considers himself to be akin to Reagan would be against this thing. Apparently he isn't.