Spurred by Ballard's appeals for the wreck to be left alone, North Carolina Congressman Walter B. Jones, Sr. introduced the RMS Titanic Maritime Memorial Act in the United States House of Representatives in 1986. It called for strict scientific guidelines to be introduced to govern the exploration and salvage of Titanic and urged the United States Secretary of State to lobby Canada, the United Kingdom and France to pass similar legislation. It passed the House and Senate by an overwhelming majority and was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on 21 October 1986.[20] However, the law has been ineffective as the wreck lies outside United States waters, and the Act was set aside by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Norfolk Division, in 1998.[130] Although negotiations among the four countries were carried out between 1997 and 2000,[131] the resulting "Agreement Concerning the Shipwrecked Vessel R.M.S. Titanic" has been ratified by only the US and the UK.[132]