Horrid niggling, or happy nuptials,

for Commission and Forum?

From JOHN CARTER in Pago Pago

Are the South Pacific Commission and the South Pacific Forum on a collision course? Or are they run ning along a road which will lead to a merger? I believe the answer is “Yes” to the latter question.

And this emerges clearly from the strong trends evident in the 17th South Pacific Conference which, in four days of hard work in American Samoa’s capital, Pago Pago, made decisions and expressed views which many delegates said are among the most critical in the 27 ac tive years of the commission’s life Two years ago, Stuart Inder, PlM’s publisher, said the SPC need ed a heart transplant. Last year I thought it had had a monkey gland transplant.

Whatever it was, it did the trick.

The SPC was more vigorous than it had ever been. And it still is, despite a feeling among many that its days as a separate, and older, body are numbered; that the SPC and the Forum will marry. After all, they’re both healthy the Forum, possibly, more dominating, the SPC quieter, shy but good at housekeeping.

But, if the courtship began this year at Pago Pago, it hadn’t a very affectionate beginning. The shadow of decisions taken a few weeks ago by the Forum at Port Moresby hung like a cloud over the conference of 22 nations and territories — a cloud with a silver lining to those who think the Forum should take over; a dark cloud on the horizon but big ger than a man’s hand to others, in cluding the Secretary-General, Dr Macu Salato, who was the first to in dicate that everything wasn’t rosy in relations between the two bodies.

Reporting on the first day when the conference got through more business than any previous conference has in one day on the commission’s achievements and prospects, Dr Salato said; “What, however, is an area of delicate and serious concern to the Secretariat in terms of how it views its own prospect, is what I must in all hones ty state at this plenary session.

“I refer to what is becoming, not a question of duplication or overlap

ping in our work, but erosion, or, perhaps a more frank term, Takeover’ in the work traditionally carried out by the South Pacific Commission by our sister regional organisation, the Forum, and its own secretariat, namely SPEC.”

Two projects the SPC had been viewing for some time, the environ mental management programme and a skipjack tuna assessment pro gramme which is the costliest effort by the SPC to date, with more than a million dollars involved were being included in SPEC’s activities, Dr Salato pointed out.

He and SPEC’s director, Mr Mahe Tupouniua, often consulted over matters to avoid duplication, but in the last talk, after the Port Moresby Forum meeting, he heard for the first time that SPEC had pro posed a fisheries agency a tradi tional SPC field.

Dr Salato asked the conference for “guidance”. He got more than that. The reaction of some delega tions, notably the “metropolitans”, was to call for clarification as to who did what.

The conference was into its sec ond working day and had the two hot potatoes, Law of the Sea and the fisheries agency, and the environ mental management programme, on its agenda.

Time after time reference was made to SPEC doing this and that, and the view was forcefully express ed, with regard to the environment business, that there was no need for another agency.

Mr Lester Edmond, leader of the American delegation, clearly didn’t like it.

“We seem to be involved in en dorsing the decisions of the Forum,” he said. “I don’t think that is the function of this body. It is almost like a volley-ball game where the ball is hit by the SPC and then the ball comes back from the Forum.

Then nine members of their team (a reference to nine Forum members being SPC members) come running on to the other side of the court.

“In my view the next operation should be a meeting of the Forum officials and the SPC officials to determine clearly what the respon sibilities of each organisation should be.”

He was echoed by Mr J.

Snodgrass of the UK.

Then, both Mr Tupouniua and Dr

Salato explained their respective

positions, and both agreed there were difficulties.

The former said it had been agreed between them that SPEC would be primarily responsible for the fisheries agency report and the

The 17th South Pacific Conference at work in Pago Pago.

SPC would prepare the environmen tal report.

Dr Salato replied that there seem ed to be some misunderstanding. He had never agreed to the fisheries agency report being done by SPEC because it was the SPC’s traditional field.

PNG’s Foreign Minister, Mr Ebia Olewale, seemed to be pressing the Forum’s claims when he stressed that only the Forum could talk politics as they were barred in the conference.

How, he asked, could they sepa rate politics from such matters as human living, social standards and the economy? How could the Is lands discuss economic and social development if they were not inde pendent? Most of the facets of human living today were likely to be in conflict with the interests of Is land countries.

“The dependent countries around this table will become independent, and then they will be able to get around a table and discuss their eco nomic and social development,” he said.

Mr Olewale, the following day, electrified the conference.

The afternoon before a resolution had been passed concerning a joint environmental management programme by SPEC and the SPC.

The preamble recalled that SPEC was “directed” to take some action by the conference the year before.

Mr Olewale must have allowed the word “direct” to invade his dreams because on the resumption he referred to it immediately and said it was an insult to the Forum.

“I am strongly opposed to this,” he said. “The Forum is a body at tended by Prime Ministers of sovereign states. I can’t see any logi cal reason for this SPC to direct SPEC when the Forum is a sovereign body and not a body at tended by ministers and others at a lower level.”

America’s Mr Edmond came up with the suggestion that the environ mental programme should be removed from the SPC’s pro gramme, declaring: ”A clear delineation of the responsibilities of each organisation is increasingly necessary.”

The resolution went back a third time to a committee which came up with an answer to “direct” no one but the Secretary-General.

After all this, every resolution

which involved the Forum and SPEC “commended”, “endorsed” and “recognised” but didn’t “direct”.

Mr Edmond asked again for clarification of duties and into the record went his wish that, before the next Planning and Evaluation Com mittee meeting next year, the Forum countries would come up with their views on the relationship between the two bodies.

But that wasn’t the end. On the last working day came a resolution which asked Australia to organise an operation to obtain the views of Australia, New Zealand, Britain, France, the United States, as origi nal signatories to the Canberra Agreement, which set up the SPC, and the independent Island coun tries, on a proposal to change the agreement.

The change would allow all the non-self governing countries in the area the Cooks, Tuvalu, the New Hebrides, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, the Gilberts, the

Solomons and Niue to enter into full membership of the SPC. Tonga would also be included.

Up to now, Tonga, although a sovereign state, has not applied for full membership which costs for 1978 $24 000 plus. Tonga is pay ing $1 092 as a voluntary contribu tion and can’t afford to pay more.

Australia had carried out a survey into this business of changing the agreement which has already been changed several times, but there’s been nothing as revolutionary as this.

It’s called “acceding to the Can berra Agreement” and needs the ap proval of all the signatories to the agreement.

Australia got its legal experts working on it. They decided there was no legal barrier to the change but there were constitutional prob lems.

Britain, France, the United States and New Zealand were quick to point this out but my impression of their attitudes was that they