FIRST, I WANT TO SAY THAT I REALLY FEEL THAT THIS GROUP of public servants has contributed more to international law and U.S. foreign policy than any other group I know, and I'm very thankful to be included in it. Much of the work of the Legal Adviser's office, of course, is in giving legal advice and good counsel to senior officers in the handling of matters within their primary responsibility; but I think it is also the case that the Legal Adviser's office is given important projects over which it has primary responsibility, where it has to make both legal and policy judgments – where it has to develop positions within the Executive Branch and to conduct necessary negotiations with the Congress and with foreign governments. Today I want to discuss three examples of this that occurred during the time that I was Acting Legal Adviser and Principal Deputy.

The 1991 Persian Gulf War Legal Regime

The first occurred in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, at a time when the Security Council was engaged in constructing a postwar regime to preserve the peace and, also, to deal with various aspects of the conflict. Of course, the legal vehicle for this postwar regime was a series of resolutions adopted by the Security Council under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, an authority that had largely been dormant during the period of the Cold War.