Remarks Following a Meeting With Members of the Antarctic Policy Group.

Ladies and gentlemen:

While you were having your briefing Secretary Cleveland and Mr. Haworth and the others briefed me on some of the material that I am going to discuss and some of the charts in the room. If you have the time and it is agreeable with them, at the conclusion of the brief statement that I will make, which will be available to you after the ceremony is over, I will ask them to review a part of this demonstration with you that I find very interesting.

There is much tension and discord in the world as we meet here this morning, and so it is particularly pleasing to me to have met with the Antarctic Policy Group a little earlier and to have heard their encouraging report of practical, peaceful cooperation among the nations of the earth.

Four years ago the Antarctica Treaty came into effect. Since then it has proved a most valuable tool of international agreement, and a most useful way of freeing Antarctica from destructive confrontations between nations.

Our objectives in Antarctica can be summarized in four very simple statements: We stand behind the Antarctica Treaty and will do everything in our power to insure that the Antarctica region will be a place of peace rather than a place of hostile international rivalries; we strongly favor international cooperation among the nations which are active in Antarctica; we support, with all of our resources, scientific research in Antarctica, further exploration and charting of Antarctica, the development of new methods of transport and logistics in that vast region, and the preservation of unique plant and animal life there. Finally, we earnestly hope that these great projects of peaceful cooperation in Antarctica will yield resources which every nation needs and every nation Can rise.

The world toward which we are all working is one in which the earth will yield up enough for every man in every country, a world of peace in which the very deserts bloom and the polar ice is turned to the enrichment of man's life.

The actions of the Antarctic Policy Group are important steps toward achieving such a world and steps toward lasting peace among nations.

I am grateful for the effort of the group and I have asked them to remain with you for a few minutes after my departure to discuss their great work in more detail as they have discussed with me a few minutes ago.

I now present with great pleasure, the Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Harlan Cleveland.