dump.

ball is popular also, however, and the odd US team plays a local team on the way through Fiji to Australia or New Zealand.

Political relations between the two countries were

uncomplicated until recently.

Over the years since independence in 1970, a senior foreign office man in Suva argued, the two sides have really not had much to talk about since Fiji has been

preoccupied with regional,

European Common Market and other affairs in which the Americans have little involve ment.

At the United Nations Fiji’s policy is to steer away from in volvement with any bloc ‘the least aligned of the unaligned countries’, it calls itself. Its geo graphical position, far from the hot spots of South-east Asia and Africa, makes it feel that there is no need for any form of military alliance with the US. Australia and New Zealand are its natural protec tors, it feels.

Fiji thinks that the South Pa cific should be preserved as a peaceful area, free not only of French nuclear tests but of patrols by American and other non-regional war fleets. It joined with other members of the South Pacific Forum in throwing up its hands in horror last year when the US admitted that it was thinking of turning one of its North Pacific pos sessions into a nuclear waste

dump.

Its first serious disagreement with the US arose quite recently when the US Government got difficult about recognising claims by Fiji and other Pacific Island countries to own tuna stocks swimming into the 200-mile economic zones which they are in the process of proclaiming. The US is being pressured by its own tuna

fishing lobby and Fiji’s reac

tion was to lead a move that saw the US excluded from membership of the new South Pacific fisheries agency.

Another cause for trouble is the US refusal to pay landing fees when its military and state aircraft (as distinct from com mercial airlines) land at Nadi, or to pay fees to the Fiji Re

gional Flight Information

Centre when they use its ser

vices in flying through Fiji’s

airspace. Fiji’s complaint is

that the US is the only foreign country to refuse to cough up.

While the air dispute is un likely to become a major cause of trouble, the tuna fishing and marine jurisdiction issue is far

more complex.

If US tuna fleets move into the South Pacific in a big way, as they may do, and start poaching in the 200-mile zones, counting on the US navy to protect them from the wrath of indignant Pacific Islanders, the otherwise amicable relations between the US and Fiji and its fellow Forum members could become mightily strained.