Orth Pacific

Islands

joined With South Pacific Commission

New York, Mch. 18.

Fr. William D. Forsyth,

■■ permanent representative of istralia to the United Nations, to y deposited with the UN Secre iat, on behalf of his Government, )ies of an agreement extending the ritorial scope of the South Pacific mmission to include Guam and the cronesian Islands Trust Territory ninistered by the United States. . Forsyth was the first Secretary neral of the Commission.

Vlr. I. R. Halligan, special repre tative for New Guinea and Nauru this session of Trusteeship Council, > present. He is Australian senior nmissioner on the South Pacific □amission. fhe agreement was registered with Secretariat in accordance with icle 102 of the Charter, which re res registration of all treaties and agreements entered into Member States.

Australia registered the agreement behalf of the six members of the nmission: Australia, France, the .herlands, New Zealand, the ited Kingdom and the United tes, the six Governments adminis ng non-self-governing territories in South Pacific region. he new agreement brings within scope of the Commission the riana, Caroline and Marshall

Islands, which lie north of the Equator. The Commission is ad visory and deals with problems of health, economic development, agri culture, social development and edu cation. It was established in 1947 and has headquarters at Noumea.

There are a score of large archi pelagos south of the Equator, as well as innumerable small ones; and most of the large ones have their indivi dual, separate administrations. But north of the Equator, there are only the archipelagoes of Hawaii, Philip pines, part of Indonesia, and the three groups (Mariana, Caroline and Marshall) usually called Micronesia.

All except Micronesia are so big that they have the status of self-governing States. Only the Micronesian groups

are comparable with the South Pacific groups. Therefore, for the purposes named, the inclusion of Micronesia with the South Pacific groups was ob viously a sound course to follow.