WASHINGTON -- An end to negotiations may be in sight for a new international shipping agreement to replace the antiquated Carriage of Goods by Sea treaty.

The United Nations may have a new treaty ready for ratification by nations by the fall of 2008, according to a senior United States delegate to the UN Commission on International Trade Law working group that is negotiating the new agreement.

"We're agreeing on more and more substantive issues, and leaving more to the secretariat to draft," said Chester H. Hooper, a partner with the law firm of Holland & Knight in New York. The working group of Uncitral, the commission that formulates and regulates international trade in cooperation with the World Trade Organization, completed a second round of negotiations earlier this month at its fall meeting in Vienna.

The Uncitral staff will now write a new draft treaty based on the agreements the working group has reached so far, Hooper said. The working group will begin a third reading in New York next April. When that round ends, likely by spring, 2008, the treaty will be ready for approval by Uncitral and the UN General Assembly.

If the U.S. ratifies the new treaty, it would replace a 1936 law passed by Congress based on the 1924 Cogsa treaty.

Hooper said that the international working group reached consensus on two critical items during the Vienna meeting. The first was damages that a cargo owner may collect for delay caused by the carrier. For example, a shipper may claim freight charges if a carrier delay prevents goods from arriving in time for the holiday. On the other hand, a carrier may claim damages if a shipper causes a delay in the sailing of a ship.

The second item was over "jurisdiction and arbitration," the so-called "forum selection" issue. In 2005, negotiators agreed that cargo interests could file suit in the place where goods were received, where they were delivered, at the first port of loading, the last port of discharge, or the carrier's principal place of business.

Hooper said that this year, negotiators agreed to include jurisdiction and arbitration language that would allow a nation to accept the terms in the treaty, or offer cargo owners different choices of forum, even though the nation ratifies the rest of the treaty.