"Bewildered" By US

Western Samoa's PM "Bewildered" By US Aid Rebuff

The cold, hard reality of indepen dence hit Western Samoa with a cold, hard wallop in September when Prime Minister Mataafa announced that the United States had refused his recent personal request for

financial aid.

WESTERN SAMOA has been independent for nearly five years, but it has grown accustomed to re ceiving substantial financial aid from outside sources, notably the United Nations (of which it is not a member nation) and New Zealand (which formerly administered it).

It has also become used to seeing the United States pouring millions of dollars into neighbouring Ameri can Samoa, and it seems to have developed the belief that you only have to put your hand out for aid and someone will give it to you.

Mataafa said he was “deeply hurt” and “bewildered” at the US refusal to give him the money his country needed, and he added that he would now try to obtain it from Japan or West Germany.

If those two countries also turned him down, he would “have no option but to seek help from the Communist bloc”.

Mataafa told a news representa tive: “We are asking for a million dollars to complete the Asau harbour project [on Savai’i] and we also need bulldozers and heavy engineering equipment for access roads, and at least another million dollars for general development”.

The Prime Minister’s threat about seeking aid from the Communist bloc was more bluff than anything.

But it happened to coincide with an announcement that a Russian journalist, Mr. Vadin Kassis, deputy editor of the foreign section of Isvestia, had been granted permission to visit Western Samoa. He was due to leave Moscow on September 30.

Prime Minister Mataafa