Micronesia
p. 12 · Read in the full issue
Un Wants
Unity For
From DAN GIBSON on Guam The 44th session of the United Nations Trusteeship Council has ended with general support for the United States’ plans for dissolution of the last remaining trust territory, Micronesia, in 1981.
The USA, according to rep resentative John Kriendler, believes “that the interests of the people of Micronesia would be best served by the maintenance of some form of unity” among the various island dis tricts after the trusteeship is dissolv ed.
The US believes that a political status of free association with the US. “provides the most promising basis for ensuring a mutually satisfying relationship between the US and the peoples of the Marshall Islands and the Caroline Islands.”
But representatives from both Palau and the Marshalls repeated their desire to break away from the remaining districts of Yap, Truk, Ponape and Kosrae and enter into separate negotiations with the US.
While acknowledging the islan ders’ right to self-determination, the Trusteeship Council tended to echo the US position in its final report, noting “with satisfaction’’ that Micronesia “would best be served by the maintenance of some form of unity.”
“Free association might have the advantage of providing a transi tional period that would allow the people time to evaluate the relation ship; it would also provide time for further economic development while keeping open the possibility of altering their political status at a future date,” the report observed.
A draft constitution was schedul ed to go before the people of both is land chains in a referendum on July 12, 1978. The council, the report noted, hopes that the draft constitu tion “will be in a form likely to be acceptable to all the districts in the Caroline Islands and the Marshall Islands, and calculated to preserve a degree of unity among them.”
The report was adopted by a 2-1 vote, with Great Britain and France
in favour and Russia against. USSR delegate Vadim P. Kovalenko said the US should promote the islan ders’ right to self-determination “not in words but in deeds.”