INTRO- Pat Clyne [Publisher/Executive Director, IMAC Digest]

The second UNESCO Draft Convention on the Protection of our Cultural Heritage is coming to a close. Similar to last year, it was realized that time was running out and not much was being accomplished. It was decided that the delegates and their representatives be broken up into separate working groups to discuss the individual articles of the convention and debate their proper wording. These working groups were, at first, to be concluded by 3pm on Friday where the delegates would again gather in plenary to finalize what they had agreed on. Of course, the very complicated issue of what phrases should be put in brackets and which should be footnotes, and the idiomatic juggling of the words "should" and "shall" took precedent over meaningful dialogue for hours on end.

Of course, the 3pm deadline came and went, and with the deadline came deadlock on most issues. The debates continued after hours for all of the groups, and the plenary was to take up session again on Saturday to finalize the wording of the articles.

Peter Hess had to leave for Bulgaria and Steve Yormak was off to Canada. They will unfortunately miss the exciting conclusion of this years convention. (I never thought I would envy anyone going to Bulgaria.) Their final reports and thoughts on this years convention will be published here in more depth in the next few days. We will also list the names of all the delegates for our IMAC readers who would like to correspond with them, along with the final position paper of the U.S.

Also, we will have an exclusive IMAC interview with the senior United States delegate to UNESCO, Robert Blumberg, who will tell us what he thought of the proceedings, and the fate of the professional shipwreck salvor, through his unique perspective.