pation of the vessel owner in the financing of compensation by payment of a fee for the guarantee made to him by the Government.

This bill would also have the virtue of not establishing a rigid requirement of suspension of assistance under the Foreign Assistance Act and would thereby maintain the flexibility needed in this sensitive area.

For these reasons, Mr. Chairman, the Department of State urges your favorable consideration of the bill drawn up by the Department of the Interior.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be available for any questions concerning my statement or the Department's report.

Mr. DINGELL. Thank you, Mr. McKernan, for your very helpful testimony.

Mr. Reinecke?

Mr. REINECKE. I will only ask what more you feel can be done in the way of negotiations than has already been done.

Mr. McKERNAN. Well, Mr. Reinecke, it appears to us that this problem can only be solved by negotiations.

(Classified material deleted.)

Mr. McKERNAN. Accordingly, the course of action that we are vigorously pursuing with the Department of the Interior and other Government agencies is to get these people to the conference table and start talking in terms of providing perhaps some special protection for the coastal fisheries of greatest interest to them such as the anchoveta fishery of Peru, and at the same time assuring them and showing that we are interested in preserving the resources and actively pursuing conservation programs on these resources.

This seems to me to be the only possible way. The views of these governments are strongly held by various political factions in the countries.

(Classified material deleted.)

Mr. REINECKE. If these thoughts and feelings are so avidly held, do you think that they are willing to negotiate anything reasonable? Mr. McKERNAN. The fact is of course that many of the government people, we think, once we get a chance to talk to these people, are reasonable, and that if we could come up with a scheme which would take into account their legal posture, then perhaps we could work out a solution.

One can think of several ways to do this. It is not impossible to think of ways that could, for example, possibly be sold in Peru as maintaining her position about sovereignty but which at the same time would in fact preserve our own position of freedom of fishing on the high seas.

Mr. REINECKE. Are these claims that they make by executive proclamation or by their own constitutions, or by statute?

Mr. McKERNAN. Some are by the constitution and some are by their assemblies. Most of them are by their congresses or other appropriate body or else are in the constitution.

Mr. REINECKE. We have also heard that this 200-mile limit goes back to World War II when President Truman declared a 200-mile area off the coast to be a security area.

Mr. McKERNAN. The so-called Truman proclamation.

Mr. REINECKE. That is correct.

Mr. McKERNAN. Yes; they do use this and they have quite a plausible argument that has been repeated to me several times their point being that we really started this, our proclamation set up particular conservation zones off our coast.

It is true that we did not implement those with respect to fisheries but we did implement those with respect to the Continental Shelf as was later accepted at the Law of the Sea Conference.

Mr. REINECKE. I am sure that everybody on the committee wants to see negotiations as a means of solving this problem and we all understand that these bills were introduced to try to put some backbone into State or even give State an excuse to bargain with these people, but how much time do you think we can afford to wait?

What in your opinion is adequate time before we finally look at something that will accomplish the purpose?

Mr. McKERNAN. This is a good question. I know the tremendous interest of everyone on this committee from long years of experience appearing before you. In my judgment there is some change, some amendment to the Fishermen's Protective Act is needed now.

The fishermen deserve a better break than they are getting. The boatowner suffers severe losses if he upholds the U.S. flag in these waters and the fisherman, of course, catches it right in the neck. He gets nothing at the present time with present arrangements, so that in our judgment it is time we made a change, and the bills that the departments have brought together into this compromise piece of legislation here I think are good bills for the interim period.

We are hopeful of going back to the South American countries and getting suitable conditions for a meeting with these countries.

We are hopeful of being able to sit down with them before the end of this year under conditions more favorable than we have had before. There are some differences among the departments yet and there are some differences within our own department, I may say in all candor, about exactly when and under what conditions we should meet with these countries.

But I am optimistic that in the long haul these people are going to do what is in their interest, and I believe that we can put together, if we work hard on it, a program which will be satisfactory to them as being in their long-range interest.

(Classified material deleted.)

Mr. REINECKE. I know the feeling we get is that the arrogance. with which they seem to undertake this whole process is such that they are not particularly interested in solving the problem.

As mentioned hereby someone this morning, perhaps it is just a good way to pick up some extra income.

(Classified material deleted.)

Mr. MCKERNAN. I think we can come up with sufficient criteria, as we have applied in certain circumstances in the north Pacific ocean with salmon on the so-called abstention principle, some of these criteria on which we could sit down and work would perhaps give some special interest in the anchoveta fishery and provide the protection that they need and yet allow us to fish for yellowfin that they are not fishing at all and get them to participate in the present Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission to insure the protection of the yellowfin so that when they were ready to start harvesting them they would be there in abundance.

Mr. REINECKE. Then I think time is a major consideration here, because if these incidents continue, sooner or later someone is going to get killed. Someone get trigger happy on these operations and then the fat will really be in the fire and everybody will be in trouble. What are your immediate plans in this respect? (Classified material deleted.)

Mr. DINGELL. I would like to know, Mr. McKernan, just what are you doing about this problem. You have a number of tools available. to you, such as, diplomatic pressure, foreign aid, military assistance, and Alliance for Progress; I saw some statistics here this morning that are quite interesting. The U.S. is giving to these countries the vessels that are seizing our ships. We are pouring in millions of dollars a year in assistance to these people in the most unbelievable fashion imaginable.

Countries that have a population of 4 million people are getting some $90 million in American foreign assistance. For example, Ecuador has $96.7 million in foreign assistance, $16 million for exportimport, $27.1 million for food-for-peace, $27.8 million for Social Progress Trust Fund; $9.6 million for the Peace Corps. This makes a total of $177.2 million that we are giving them, plus gunboats to catch our ships, and yet we are not even able to get out there and talk sense to these people.

Panama gets $108 million and they have a population of only 1,231,000. Peru has a population of 11 million and they are getting $279 million. That is the equivalent, as I figure it, of about $27 per person. For Ecuador, it's $44 a person. Panama is receiving the equivalent of about $100 a person. Peru, we are giving $27 or $28 a person and can't even make them stop seizing our ships.

Can you name to this committee one concrete thing you are doing other than saying, "Fellows, we would like to talk.”

Mr. McKERNAN. I am not sure of what you mean by "concrete.” Mr. DINGELL. Are you saying "stop or we will cease our aid program" or do you say "We feel it will be necessary to reduce our commitments during the forthcoming year" and they say "we have to have it" and you say "Well, we will consider it but we have these problems that have to be looked into."

Mr. McKERNAN. These numbers extend over a number of years. They are not annual. I just want to point that out.

Mr. DINGELL. We are giving them vessels with which to seize our vessels and also, we are coming in with new programs all the time. Mr. McKERNAN. Every one of these points that you have raised has been argued and considered very seriously within Government. Mr. DINGELL. What have you done about it?

Mr. McKERNAN. We have done a great many things even in the few months that I have been over there.

Mr. DINGELL. I want to know.

Mr. McKERNAN. Our Ambassadors and our top-level officials have talked to both the people in these countries and also to their representatives in our capital here.

Mr. DINGELL. Are you saying "oh, please, fellows?"

Mr. McKERNAN. No; they are saying this is going to have serious consequences in our relations. [Deleted.]

Mr. DINGELL. I am also aware over the years that we can protect ourselves. We did it with the Barbary Pirates in Tunisia in the time pre

ceding the war of 1812, we did it in time preceding the war with France.

We have had ships protect our whaling ships from time to time. Are we doing that?

Mr. McKERNAN. No; we are not. We have not because we thought that the best way is through negotiations.

Mr. DINGELL. This situation has been going on since 1952 and the committee since 1955 has had a continual period of complaint; we have offered legislation, held hearings and as near as I can figure it, the situation is as bad or worse now in terms of the total seizure on a monthly or annual basis as it was when we commenced.

(Classified material deleted.)

Mr. DINGELL. Now the situation has gotten worse. You have three nations seizing nearly every vessel coming by with patrol boats and jet aircraft supplied by the United States.

Mr. McKERNAN. They are not all doing it. I would like to put the record straight on that.

Mr. DINGELL. A large number of them and a large number of the vessels involved.

Mr. McKERNAN. I will even agree to many. I don't agree that they ought to be grabbing them with any boats, though, no matter who supplies them but it is-it does seem to me that we are trying to do something and are trying very hard and trying to do them short of affecting our overall program with Latin America.

Mr. DINGELL. What are we doing?

You tell us that we are trying to get them to talk. Well, we are trying to get the North Vietnamese to talk and yet our best efforts such as offers of cease-fire, cessation of bombing, foreign aid, and everything else have been nonproductive.

Mr. McKERNAN. I am less of an expert there than you are.

Mr. DINGELL. I am not an expert on that and I don't know anybody who is. The problem is what concrete things are you doing aside from saying "we are talking"?

Mr. McKERNAN. Well, I will tell you specifically what we have done. In February we sent a specific proposal for immediate discussions with these countries.

Mr. DINGELL. What did they do about it?

Mr. McKERNAN. Just within the past week they have come back and said, "We don't want to talk to you on the terms that you suggest but we will be glad to have discussions with you on some other terms."

We are going to go back to them and find out if, in fact, they are willing to discuss these problems that we want to discuss at such a conference.

In other words, I think we are making a little progress. I don't want to be overly optimistic because the problem is such an emotional one in these countries and it has such strong appeal for people within these countries who don't like the United States anyway that it seems to me that we must have some tolerance for dealing with this problem in a way that can let their governments live and still talk to us.

Now, right now, right at this moment, we are talking further about what kind of a conference we can have that will get at this problem. So it seems to me that we are doing something positive, although I would be the first to admit that it has been too slow and perhaps there has been too little of it. At the present time I have a feeling that there is

some progress being made and that everybody from the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Interior right on down, is putting a special effort in this problem at the present time, because it has become more acute and we want to see a solution to it.

We don't like to come over here and talk in generalities either. We would like to see an end to it just as quickly as we can.

(Classified material deleted.)

Mr. DINGELL. What would happen if we had gunboats accompanying our fleet? The British did it off Iceland.

(Classified material deleted.)

Mr. DINGELL. I want you to know something, Mr. McKernan. When I analyze the amount of aid we have given these people, the number of seizures and the amount of fines and other charges levied against our people, the harassment of our fishermen, the strafings, the shotguns, the gunfire and the unlawful theft of property belonging to American citizens on the high seas, I become very much outraged.

I must confess that I find it hard to believe that everything that can be done is being done. We are giving these people millions of dollars and furnishing them with the fisheries patrol craft that are catching our own vessels.

Have there been any of these vessels given in the way of foreign aid to these countries of Latin America of late?

Mr. McKERNAN. I will have to ask some of my experts.

Mr. BARNEBEY. There have been only a few deliveries of patrol craft recently.

Mr. DINGELL. Can you give us the list of patrol craft?

Mr. BARNEBEY. We can furnish it. As I say under the Ship Loan Act there have been no ships of this type furnished recently. Mr. DINGELL. I would like to have that list.

(The document referred to follows:)

PATROL CRAFT SUPPLIED TO LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES

[AN-net-laying ship; ATA-auxilary ocean tug; ATF-fleet ocean tug; APD-high-speed transport; DD-destroyer; DE-destroyer escort; MSC-minesweeper, coastal; MSF-minesweeper, fleet; PC-submarine chaser; PCE-submarine chaser escort; PF-patrol escort; PGM-motor gunboat; 63-AR-63-ft. aircraft rescue boat; 95-WB-95-ft. work boat]

ARGENTINA