‘Roaring Mouse’ Sir Albert

takes on Uncle Sam

Fresh from the long-running serial of the alleged plot to as sassinate him in a coup d’etat (see story elsewhere in PIM), the Cook Islands Premier Sir Albert Henry sallied forth into the in ternational arena. Picking on the biggest opponent in sight, he told the United States to go to blazes”.

Under the headline Cook Is lands the Mouse that Roared”, Bruce Benson of the Honolulu Advertiser told the story of how Sir Albert used the occasion of a visit to the US State of Hawaii to air his views on a claim laid by the US to the Cooks’ islands of Pukapuka, Manihi k i, Rakahan g a and Penrhyn.

The US claim was first laid 121 year ago, on August 18, 1856, with the passage of the so-called Guano Act. The act said the US had an interest in 48 islands in the Central Pacific for the removal of guano, a natural fer tiliser of bird-droppings.

According to Mr Lee Motteler of Honolulu”s Bishop Museum, 15 of the islands turned out to be non-existent; the act listed 12 of them twice, and the names of only 18 of the 48 were spelled correctly. None of the four Cooks islands was ever mined by Americans for guano, and only one, Penrhyn, was ever even visited by an American ex pedition.

Interviewed by Benson in Honolulu Sir Albert explained that the whole half-forgotten affair of the Guano Act had sud denly taken on topicality in rela tion to the current United Na tions conference on the Law of the Sea.

He said: “Only two weeks ago America supported the concept of setting up a 200-mile econ omic zone. It already supports a 200-mile fishing zone.

“But then America put a pro viso in her motion at the con

ference that all countries, is lands and territories involved in a dispute should be left out of the agreement they’re working on.

“And then America informed me though the New Zealand Foreign Affairs office that she considers that our four islands are ‘under dispute’. What she’s saying is that because America wants it, our 200-mile limits are to be left out of the agreement.”

It was against this background that Sir A Ibert, in the course of a speech at a Honolulu luncheon given by the Pacific Islands Tourist Development Council, told the US: “ You can go to blazes, you can’t have my is lands. ”

On a more sober note, he told Benson: “/ do know everyone’s wanting a piece of water. The 15 islands that make up the Cooks cover 850 000 square miles of ocean. The four islands of our group that the US is claiming take in a quarter of a million square miles of the sea . . .

“ They’ve found mountains of manganese nodules in our waters, but that’s well to the south of the islands they’re claiming. I don’t think that’s what they’re after. I think they just want another quarter of a million miles of ocean to own.”

Sir Albert said his government was having preliminary dis cussions with other countries, in cluding Thailand and Taiwan, aimed at the development of commercial fishing in Cook Is lands waters.

Public reaction in Hawaii to Sir Albert’s stand against the US claim was overwhelmingly sym pathetic.

Popular columnist Sammy Amalu wrote in the Honolulu Advertiser that the US should for once “be truly magnanimous and give up its claims in favour of the Cook Islands”. He added: “Any way, if we did own those four rocks, all we would do with them

is probably to bomb them Just as we are now bombing our own Kahoolawe. ”

Sir Albert’s remark that while Hawaii’s policy may he American-oriented, it should also still he Pacific-centred deeply impressed Amalu, who wrote: “We of the Pacific are born not of continents but of islands.

As a consequence, we think dif ferently from continentals. As the Arabian is never unaware of the desert sands that surround him, so are we islanders never unaware of the pelagic deserts that surround us. This difference in viewpoint between us and continentals is fundamental.

Because of this, Hawaii as well as the Cook Islands must be, as Sir Albert says, Pacific-centred.”

Occasion of Sir Albert Henry’s Hawaii visit was the inaugural flight of A ir New Zealand’s new direct Rarotonga-Honolulu ser vice. Hawaii State Governor Ariyoshi proclaimed June 4-11 as Cook Islands Celebration Week.