incidents of sovereign authority. >> senator, i'm going to stick with the operational aspects of that, if i may. this increasing competitiveness that's generated by increased human activity and economic activity really opens up the whole new world of friction point and for an operational commanders it's where you're going to pick your fights and what tool are in your tool bag and harsh environment and few assets and infrastructure and economic activity outpacing that ability. so having this framework. this starting point with the other arctic nations and not just the nations in my case and the chiefs of defense and the chiefs of security that allows us to build, shared, situational awareness and common interests and common framework so we can avoid my job and avoid these frictions the best that i can with this pace of activities. >> so it's a common framework that you're referring to, would

that be established with the international sea bed authority? is that the metaphor cal table that we're talking about? >> i'm going to stick with the operational aspects of it. i think the sea bed questions and the continental shelf questions are the things that are the uncertainty that are accompanied to increase economic activity. the law of the sea does allow us a starting point of certainty in our discussions and the coordination in cooperation as we try to resolve what is really an opportunity to have a boon in the activity in the arctic. and it's about the future and it's about to contribute to the peaceful opening of the arctic to reduce potential friction points and this is a solid framework which the arctic countries and chiefs of defense start with when we begin those decisions.

>> i mentioned a few minutes ago that we had difficulty negoti e negotiating with canada on an issue that you described and you said that canada was standing on what you regarded as i think a weak footing or words to that effect. you also indicated that although it was on weak footing, the objections that canada was raising was based on the fact that they had not yet ratified this treaty. you want to explain why that is the case and why that would necessarily resolve it? and getting back to senator rich's comment with the cases that i cited and the one i will give you is the one that i've been personally involved with the commander and my job and part of the coast guard's response is permitting process.

and people seek to build commerce facility and there was a proposed one in northern maine and canada objected that it was in internal waters and they would have control over the weather and there were transits through that area. there was also a dispute as to our border between western canada and the eastern edge of alaska. more importantly, more significantly is the large issue of the northwest passage whether it's internal waters to canada or whether it's archapalegic. >> i apologize for interrupting, but we have very little time before we have to go vote. are these not issues that are addressed by customary international law that could be

resolved by the treaty if ratified? if we were operating under customary international law, but canada's signatory on the convention and they fall back and we are not a party and don't have any standing to dispute their claims. >> so they would regard that aspect of customary international law as non-binding to them and they're excused now from that aspect of customary international law? >> sir, as i said earlier in regard to the collision regulations and the collision avoidance regulations when we operated under customary international law and customary international law is in the eyes of the beholder and everyone has -- >> and how countries were able to come together and establish the international regulatory standards without vesting sovereign authority in international body? >> i would say that's correct, yes, sir. >> and also one in which we were

able to establish those international standards and international norms which have helped facilitate maritime traffic without subjecting the united states to lawsuits without a tribunal that would be weighted by many instances from what would likely be the arbitrator being chosen by the secretary-general of the united states. >> i can't comment on that, sir, and i would be delighted to bring my lawyers to discuss that and i'm looking from a commander's point of view where i would like to negotiate agreements on the broad range of things the coast guard does in ensuring safe, sure and environmentally safe commerce out of the country through our waters and concluding agreements in the arctic which we are constrained because we are not a party to the convention. >> thank you all very much for your testimony. in closing, to wrap up, i just want to comment that i respect

your judgment greatly and if there is a need to codify certain aspects of currently existing accident, customary international law either in the treaty or u.s. code or some combination of the two, i'm more than open in discussing that idea. i have concerns that have not been resolved in any hearing to this point or in any reading of the treaty that i've undertaken so far that what we're doing is not just for that, but we're going far beyond that and creating a -- an international body with many of the incidents of sovereignty and in doing so in a way that's completely unprecedented in u.s. history. thank you very much. >> senator lee, i appreciate your questions and those of senator mint. part of what we try to do is address concerns and your fears about this. there really are some mistaken

interpretations and i do mean mistaken. for instance, senator demint and i will talk about this one-on-one. but there is no ability to have an environmental lawsuit that would have any standing for someone to bring a suit. it can't go anywhere because the specific language of the treaty says that no one is accountable to any standard that they signed up for internationally. the united states of america is not signed up to any international environmental agreement. so i know the senator is a good lawyers and he understands standing there would be zero standing under the direct, overt language of the street and there's no ability to bring the

environmental suit about this, number one. number two, with respect with this concern about sea bed authority, the united states of america is the only country that has a permanent seat on it. kudos to ronald reagan and the folks who negotiated this and we will hear from some of the negotiators this afternoon. the others are rotating on a four-year basis. so sudan may be there today and who knows where they'll be in the future, but the bottom line is that sudan is in a lot of bodies that we currently work with and it has not impeded our ability to assert our values and our interests. moreover, if we don't cede to this treaty. the exploitative undersea

additives and whatever will not drill and will not exploit. in fact, it's very interesting. lockheed martin and asked the british government and joined into the british consortium in order to be able to access some place because the united states of america will not stand up for it and represent it through this process to legalize its claims. so here we are sending our countries and to have them stand up for their interests, and put it under exploitation unless they know they have legality of their claim and that's the extend the shelf. the extended shelf we have available to us here is bigger than any other country of the world and are we going to sit here and say is it smart for the united states not to have our companies to have legal assurance to go out there and,

mroit our resources. there will be competition for resources and look at what china is doing now in africa and look at what they're doing in afghanistan. we're fighting and putting people on the line and they're there trying to exploit copper. i mean, we have to start thinking about our long-term, strategic interest here and the only way -- if we don't sign up and we have a chance other countries can take us to the cleaners and you will see this in the classified briefing, the degree to which other countries are staking claims and we're just sitting here and we have a permanent seat and we have a veto to boot. nothing can happen through the sea bed authority that we don't agree to. so no money will be sent -- i've heard people say we're going to send money to dictators through this. no, we're not. if you want it to happen it can happen through the exploitation that will take place without us on it and then they may decide to go do those things so, in

fact, there's a reverse argument and there's a much greater interest for us to be here to protect against those kinds of distributions and i just called to the attention of the senator article 82 which sets up this entity and the distribution. you know, for the first time years of production at a site you don't pay any royalty at all. nothing, and then for the sixth year you pay about 1% of the value of production at the site. 1% of the total value of production at the site and that rate increases for each year and only at the 12th year do you get to a 7%? if we're lucky enough to hit mining and oil and gas that lasts for the 12 years and you may get 7%, much less than we pay on any of those oil rigs down in the gulf and finally, if you're a net importer of the minerals that you're producing

out there, you don't pay anything at all, zero royalty. if you're the importer because you're using it, this negotiation had the judgment to say that's your use, that's your deal, but if you're exporting it and selling it, then you have to pay the party and finally, the payments are not made to the sea bed authority. they're distinctly isolated and they go through the sea bed authority and that language is very specific and it is only? an agreement by the parties at the table and distributed to where and we're not at that table. so it will be distributed without the input of the united states. we are far better off sitting there and influencing that distribution and vetoing it if it's against our interest than we are watching it go by, so i think we ought to have this conversation -- >> if i can just respond to

those points. >> absolutely. >> i appreciate your insights and this is what you've lived with for years and i do appreciate your insights. i would observe a couple of points. the international sea bed authority is governed -- >> i would ask how much time we have for the vote? >> we have five minutes. >> the international sea bed authority is governed by the assembly and the assembly is the 160-plus member which is the supreme organ and the supreme law-making body of the authority. the chairman is absolutely right to point out that the council, the smaller body on which the united states does have a seat which can be described as veto authority and some areas that requires consensus. the council does have the authority to propose the rules and regulations governing the article 82 distribution, but ultimately the distribution itself, the determination of how

those rules are implemented and the allocation itself is made by the assembly and not by the council. as to the lawsuit, i understand your point about a lawsuit, but let's take into account the fact that -- let's suppose we, the united states get hauled into an arbitration pursuant to annex 8 and we find ourselves having chosen two of our arbitrators and opponent and the fifth having been chosen by the secretary-general of the united nations. you can easily count to three among the arbitrators who might interpret the laws to which we've aceded to which we've agreed to be bound, differently than the u.s. court might and differently than you and i might and that might present us with a risk. >> actually, it doesn't, senator, for this reason -- if we were to agree to an

international agreement with respect to the environment and we agreed to a dispute resolution process within that treaty that treaty would govern and you could specifically, in fact, preclude and i'm confident wield in the negotiation and any jurisdiction of the law of the sea over that particular issue so, in fact, we would be well protected if we were to get there. i wish this really were a threat that the united states was about to enter into an agreement on international climate change, but i think it's a long day away given where we are, but i'm willing certainly to provide for that and we can do that in the ratification that addresses that concern, and i'm perfectly happy to work with the senator to do that. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. gentlemen, i think everybody here has said it. we are enormously grateful to you for not just being here today, but for your service and your careers and for what you represent and really, it is, i

think, important to have had these 24 stars here. we are grateful for your testimony and most importantly for what you do every single day. we thank you on behalf of the country. thanks for being here today and again, happy birthday to the united states army. we stand adjourned. >> general, thanks so much. you did a great job. thank you very, very much. appreciate it. thank you.

>> as you see, this meeting has been adjourned and the first of two by the senate foreign relations committee looking into senate ratification into the law of the sea treaty. all of the military commanders testifying in support of ratification, as you may have heard. adopted by the u.n. in 1994 the treaty has been endorsed by 160 countries and the european union. it was signed by president bill clinton, but still needs support from two-thirds of the senate for rat ratification, currently, they're senators expressed their opposition to the treaty citing worries over u.s. sovereignty. this afternoon part two which will include former defense

secretary donald rumsfeld who opposes the treaty and by deputy secretary of state john negroponte. you can watch live coverage of the session over at c-span beginning at 2:30 eastern. >> yesterday treasury secretary tim geithner -- a few live programming notes on c-span, sorry about that, over on the floor of the senate, lawmakers continue to work out an agreement on amendments to legislation dealing with foreign subsidies, food stamps and conservation programs. the senate expected to be on the five-year authorization bill at least through next week. current form bill expires at the end of september. the senate is also facing a july 1 deadline on several other pieces of legislation and we spoke with the capitol hill reporter to learn more about where those bills currently stand. >> congress is facing a june 30th expiration for two bills

eyeing the same budget offsets to pay for that. national journal correspondent fawn johnson with what's going on. >> well, what's going on is that there's a countdown to a couple of different things in the middle of the summer that lawmakers are trying to figure out how to pay for. one of them is the federal highway authority which has been under endless numbers of extensions for several years and set to expire june 30th and the lawmakers will at the very least have to come up with a short-term extension in order to keep the money flowing into the high-rate trust fund and the other issue coming up in the middle of the summer is that there are subsidized student loan interest rates that are set to double on july 1st if congress doesn't act and that was set in place five years ago as part of the higher education financing act, but lawmakers are saying now that with this economy they don't want to see that interest rate double so they're trying to come up with a

way to pay for a new highway bill that would allow federal authority to continue for at least a year, maybe longer and to keep the interest rates from going up and they're proposing of different pension solutions that could wind up competing for one another in terms of how they pay for it. there's a couple of different things that senate majority leader harry reid has put out in terms of accounting for how certain pensions are accounted for in an employers' standpoint and the premiums they would pay to the pension benefit guarantee cooperation. some republicans think that these offsets would work just fine by they would not cover both bills. >> you mentioned senate majority leader harry reid. how have speakers in the house reacted to the latest proposal that would freeze student loan interest rates for a year? >> they are unwilling to look at it until they see that the

senate could actually pass a bill. this has been an ongoing back and forth between the house and senate on both the student loan issue and the highway bill issue for several months now. the house has actually passed a bill to freeze the subsidized student loan interest rates for one year using a federal health prevention fund that was part of obama's health plan as the offset for it. since they have passed that, they feel no need to act until they see the senate passing something. it's unclear whether the senate actually will. they're basely not even paying attention to it. >> what's the status of talks in the conference committee on renewing those surface transportation programs? >> the conferees who have -- this will be the chairman has been exchanging paper back and forth. they say they're working very hard. the problem is they have not even touched some of the top

line controversial issues that have been driving the bebait for months. that would be the keystone pipeline and how you would pay for the roughly $9 billion or $12 billion that you might need to bridge the gap between what would be collected from gas taxes and what you would need to keep funding the highways at the same level. those two issues are yet to be resolved. while the talks are ongoing and they seem to be friendly, it's hard to know how they're going to resolve the highway issue. i predict an extension. >> ultimately which issue will be the one that will claim the off jets we've been talking about? >> based on the comments from house speaker john boehner and from majority leader harry reid, i would place my bets on the student loan issue in part because it is much simpler than highway legislation and they can

extend the highway program without too much difficulty. president obama and the presumptivive republican nominee mitt romney have both said that they want to keep the student loan interest rate low. politically it would seem that the student loan issue would win out if you had to pick. i think that some -- harry reid particularly is trying to say he doesn't want to pick. he would like to pay for both of them. it's not clear to me that the republicans are going to follow through. >> thank you. and a few live programming notes on c-span. more to come from a faith and freedom coalition conference here in washington, d.c. that is live on c-span they're in a short break now. the senate is taking a vote and they're taking a lunch break because senators rob portman and marco rubio are among the speakers. both have been listed as possible running mates of republican presidential

candidate mitt romney. on c-span we are also planning live coverage of remarks from president obama. he'll be at a community college in cleveland speaking on the economy. contrasting his vision with that of republican challenger mitt romney. that's scheduled to get underway at about 1:45 p.m. eastern. and yesterday treasury secretary tim geithner spoke about the global economic challenges and previewed next week's g-20 summit in mexico where world leaders are gathering to discuss issues surrounding europe's debt crisis. this 45-minute discussion was hosted by the council on foreign relations here in washington, d.c.

well, thank you all very much. welcome. i'm andrea mitchell from nbc news and msnbc. and you all know secretary of the treasury, tim geithner. just wanted to make a few introductory remarks. turn off your devices not just on vibrate. we are delighted that we have secretary geithner here and at a -- could not be more timely moment the headlines today threat spreads across europe in "the wall street journal." the financial times, fear rises over e.u. handling of the debt crisis. and of course the timing with the banking committee hearings today as well. and you going to the g-20. we wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about the crisis in the euro zone, the fact that we see rates rising dramatically today in italy which certainly signals that there is some fear in the markets about contagion spreading from greece to spain to italy and italy of course

would be the big concern. we've got an election in greece on sunday and you're going to the g-20 meeting which is not called obviously to discuss this, but a lot of the major players will be there and it is an unavoidable fact. your perspective on the european crisis. the possibility of con stay onand how well capitalized our system is only today we learn that there's a lot that even the best bankers don't know about risks in their banks. so for all of the assurances that the u.s. now is immune are we really? >> good questions. so obviously it's still a very challenging moment for the global economy. for our economy and for the world. we have europe's ongoing crisis. you're seeing growth slow a bit in most of the other major economies in the world. we have our familiar challenges here. europe is in the next stage of another major escalation in

their strategy to make it work and build a stronger europe. what they're talking about are at least in the near term are three really important sets of policy changes. the first is what they call banking union which is a commitment to a more integrated framework for supervision, for deposit insurance and broader backs up of the financial system of europe. this is really important. it's important because of course no economies can function or grow without a functioning financial system. and it's important because of the pressures you're seeing from greece and elsewhere. and what spain did over the weekend to commit to a mump more dramatic recapitalization of its banking system is a good concrete signal and illustration of their commitment to move toward broader banking union. that's very important. the second thing they're talking about is a set of measures, this

is familiar to all i don't have tow troo try to make sure they have a framework in place to support these countries undertaking these reforms. what these firewalls are designed to do is to make sure that the interest rates in spain and italy and the rest of those countries are moderate enough levels that they can grow. and so it's very important that the second piece of this is there's a credible financial backstop in place supporting the countries that are reforming. reforms are going to take time and they will not work without the ability of these countries to borrow at affordable rates. the third thing they're talking about in the near term is some, let's call it a little bit of a shift towards growth on the basic framework of economic strategy. they're talking about, they have a very large infrastructure bank in europe. they have a set of infrastructure funds. they're talking about mobilizing a larger scale of resources to support infrastructure and indicating those to the countries in europe where growth is weakest. they're talking about

recalibrating their past fiscal consolidation to give countries that are reforming a bit more time to get there. a little more consistent with the weaker growth outlook in europe. so those sets of things, financial union for the financial system, a stronger backstop to the reforming countries so they can borrow at affordable interest rates and these modest steps toward growth are important and would be a good next step in terms of the escalation. this is a very challenging crisis for them still. they recognize they're going to have to do a bunch more to sort of restore a bit of calm and to convince people to make this work. and you know, i think the world's going to have a chance this monday and tuesday in mexico at the g-20 meeting to hear from them where they plan to go next. >> do you ultimately see the euro zone staying together or do you think one or more countries