NATION : U.S. Territorial Waters Extended

President Reagan today extended the territorial waters of the United States from three miles to 12 miles to conform to the standard set down by a U.N. agreement in 1982.

The presidential proclamation said the extension will give the United States, for an additional nine miles offshore, “a sovereignty and jurisdiction that extend to the airspace over the territorial sea, as well as to its bed and subsoil.”

Assistant White House Press Secretary Bob Hall said the action was taken because almost all other countries in the world use the 12-mile limit and because the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea had called on all nations to conform.