Remaining treaty holdouts likely to ratify treaty after U.S.

To these I might add that other coastal states that have yet to become party to the Convention and its implementing agreements are more likely to follow suit once we are party to all of them. Canada ratified the Convention within weeks after the Bush Administration testified in support of the Convention last fall. Several weeks after that, the European Union and its 15 member states became party to the 1995 Agreement on the Implementation of the Provisions of the Law of the Sea Convention regarding Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, to which the United States is already party but which is not as widely ratified as the Convention. With both Europe and North America firmly aligned on the essential elements of the superstructure of the modern law of the sea, it is more likely that others can be encouraged to come along soon.