Agreement Near On New
p. 19 · Read in the full issue
W. Samoa-Nz Service
The Western Samoa and New Zealand Governments have reached agreement on many points covering the proposed air service between Faleolo, near Apia, and Auckland.
A holding company will be set up to provide the aircraft. This company, owned by both governments, will charter the aircraft to Polynesian Airlines and Air New Zealand.
Each will use the aircraft for specified periods.
The Western Samoa Minister for Economic Affairs, Communications and Transport, Mr Asi Eikeni, while acting as Prime Minister for a few weeks, said the only hold-up was finding a suitable aircraft. A Boeing 737 was needed. One could come from the NZ National Airways Cor poration, but it would have to be refitted with special equipment, which could take as long as eight months to manufacture. The service, when it starts, will also take in Fua’amotu in Tonga.
This was the scene at the close of Pacifique 77 when more than 50 delegates from 15 countries took part in the final feast at the Anglican training centre at Kohimarama, near Honiara in the Solomons early in September Pacifique 77, lasting two weeks, was a grassroots conference, supported by all the Churches, and designed to tackle the problems of the region the national goals of Island society, the Church's role, colonialism and dependency, partnership in development, leadership and education for liberation and development and communications, out of which came calls to ban nuclear testing, to establish a Pacific Common Market and Pacific News Agency, to take over foreign-owned news media, to ban television, to base education on Pacific situations, to oppose uranium mining in Australia and to compensate Islanders whose ancestors were "blackbirded" to work "as slaves" in the Queensland plantations
Norfolk Islander Charles I. Buffett, who has been appointed Administrator of Cocos Island in the Indian Ocean. He takes over, at the behest of Canberra, an island which, until Australia asserted sovereignty over it, was the private dom ain of Mr John Clunies-Ross, whose anc estors were given the island by Queen Victoria. Mr Buffett served a term as Deputy Administrator of Norfolk Island but resigned when Canberra refused to confirm his appointment as Administr ator.