UN General Assembly
1991

Iceland has ratified the Convention; we believe that its provisions constitute a broadly acceptable regime for the rational exploitation of the world's marine resources. It has established rules for a wide range of uses for the seas, thereby reducing the potential for conflict between interested States. I might add that, in the field of environmental protection, the Brundtland Commission concluded that the most significant initial action that States could take in the interests of the oceans' threatened life-support system was to ratify the Convention. We are of course aware that a number of industrialized countries remain concerned about the rules in the Convention on the exploitation of the deep seabed. We must here act quickly to preserve the bonds that were forged between developing nations and the industrialized world at the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea. It is our submission that some of the difficulties may have related to differences in ideology in the past, but these differences art fait disappearing from the international scene.