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THINGS TO LOOK FOR TODAY

INFORMAL CONSULTATIONS: Discussion will continue this morning at 11:00 on Nandan's working draft, "Compatibility and coherence between national and international conservation measures for the same stock". Debate will then turn to the two documents distributed yesterday afternoon, "Port State enforcement" and "Non-parties to a subregional or regional agreement or arrangement."

Look for a proposal today from Nandan regarding the dates and number of future "sessions" of the Conference to be held in 1994. Nandan announced yesterday that on Friday he plans to hear limited discussion on this item and adjourn this session of the Conference at 1:00 pm.

A/CONF.164/L.11/REV.1: The revised version of the Draft convention on the conservation and management of straddling stocks on the high seas and highly migratory fish stock on the high seas, submitted by Argentina, Canada, Chile, Iceland and New Zealand, will be released today as A/CONF.164/L.11/Rev.1. This new text has been discussed in detail during a series of consultations held by the sponsors with representatives of various regional groups. The changes in this document reflect the input from these meetings, an NGO paper on L.11, and certain trends emerging in Nandan's informal consultations. Noteworthy changes in L.11/Rev. 1 include: 1) the addition of Annex II "Selected precautionary measures on the high seas" that adds detail to Article 5 on the precautionary approach; 2) the reorganization of Article 7 on surveillance and control measures that includes provision for minimizing costs for coastal developing countries and on the particular circumstances in individual regions; 3) provision in Article 18(c) for the establishment of funds to enable developing countries to defray the costs of dispute settlement; 4) qualifying language related to the jurisdictional basis of port State enforcement in Article 11; 5) the addition of a new article 16 titled "Information on disposition of cases" that requires the flag State that receives one of its own arrested fishing vessels to inform the coastal arresting State within 12 months of the final disposition of the case; and 6) improved provisions of Article 24 on technical cooperation with developing countries. Some of the sponsors hope that L.11/Rev.1 will continue to evolve, in a process not unlike that taken by the draft agreement on flagging, and might, eventually, be merged with the outcome of Nandan's consultations.

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