UNCITRAL-COMITE UN SESSION OPENS WITH INTERMODAL SPLIT
The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) opened its two-week-long Working Group III’s transport law session at UN headquarters in New York on Monday with a sharp division on intermodal provisions in a preliminary draft of an international covenant that would streamline the carriage of goods by sea.
At the morning session, members of the Comite Maritime International, which prepared the preliminary draft, sat with UNCITRAL’s delegates as representatives from Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands said the proposed text should only deal with port-to-port issues at this time, a position also taken by observers from FIATA, the International Federation of Freight Forwarders Associations.
However, delegates from the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and France said the proposed covenant had to have an intermodal, door-to-door range, as it had been drafted, to be worth pursuing.
The Comite’s position was that the UN session had “to go back to the roots of contract of carriage” in writing a uniform international convention. Several UNCITRAL delegates disagreed, saying that current UNCTAD/ICC rules covering intermodal shipments were adequate for the foreseeable future, and that the UNCITRAL/COMITE session should limit itself to a narrow readjustment of maritime rules that would not apply beyond the sea carriage of cargo.
The session will meet at the UN through April 26.