Forum backs Hebrides government
p. 17 · Read in the full issue
Austere, informal to the extreme, and simple, the meeting of the South Pacific Forum at Tarawa, Kiribati, on July 14-15 was also one of the most significant of recent years and not just because of the New Hebrides situation, which topped its agenda. So ROBERT KEITH-REID sums up the 11th meeting of the Forum which he covered for RIM.
Port-Vila 1981 that’s where the government heads who went to Tarawa, Kiribati, in July for the llth meeting of the South Pacific Forum intend to have their 12th gathering.
The choice of the Port-Vila venue at the end of a brisk meeting held on July 14-15 in Kiribati's thatch-roofed House of Representatives chamber was obviously meant to under line the declaration speedily accepted and issued three hours after President leremia Tabai had welcomed the Fo rum's 1 I other full members to his atoll republic, and opened the meeting as its chairman.
It was an event that at tracted the biggest number of leaders to a Forum conference for some years. Every prime minister, president or premier was there except for Western Samoa's Tupuola Efi, who sent his Minister for Economic Af fairs. Letiu Tamaloa.
The big turnout by the leaders confirmed the expec tation that the paramount issue at a meeting held only two weeks before the due dale for the independence of the New Hebrides would be the thorny problems faced by the govern ment of Father Waller Lini in trying to hold the country together, secure from assaults on its unity by secessionists, after the French and British pullout.
After gelling a personal briefing from Fr Lini on the situation in his country caused by the unwillingness of the two outgoing powers to act effectively together in restoring order in Esprilu Santo, the rebel island, the Forum unanimously approved the New Hebrides’ application for full membership of the club from independence day on July 30.
Then, with little debate, since all the hard talking had been done at an informal din ner given by President Tabai the previous night, the Forum passed a resolution that in
sisted that Britain and France meet their promise to free the New Hebrides on July 30.
It noted the events of the previous two months ‘with dis may', and said the Forum expected freedom for the con dominium on July 30. It told Britain and France that they should end the rebellion im mediately and ‘promote the stability and integrity’ of the new stale after independence.
It also warned the two colonial powers that Forum members ‘would be watching closely' how they discharge their res ponsibility.
There were mixed views among observers in assessing the impact of the message in the declaration. Was it any thing more than just a bit of toothless Forum formality?
But Fr Lini, who had trav elled to Tarawa especially to lobby for support, seemed happy enough with the catch he had been fighting for. Ex pressing himself ‘very, very encouraged’, he told reporters that Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser had ‘changed the words in the resolution to make it a lot stronger’.
After the passing of the resolution a delighted Fr Lini told the press: ‘As far as I am concerned Britain (which has 200 Marines in Port-Vila on standby) should stay until the end of the year. We do not want them to go. ‘lf they go we shall have to look to other countries, which will most likely be PNG and Fiji, to help.' Fiji Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara had told him: ‘Fiji is ready to send troops if the UN calls on us to do so.’
Fr Lini described as ‘crucial’ a visit made to Port-Vila by Brigadier-General Ted Diro, the PNG army commander, in the company of the New Hebrides Government’s chief secretary Barak Sope. Both men left Tarawa for Port-Vila on the first day of the Forum.
PNG’s Sir Julius Chan,
attending his first Forum meet ing as his country’s leader, assured the press that Diro was going to Port-Vila purely to discuss PNG’s contribution to independence celebrations.
T am not going to go deeper than that,' he said, but added; Tf a person in that situation (Diro) does not take note of the situation he does not deserve to be in that situation. He is bloody stupid.’
As the Forum tackled the New Hebrides question, Kiribati was bravely coping with a ‘rebellion’ by more than 600 government workers who went on strike four days before the opening of the meeting to back pay and retirement age claims, and in protest against the arrest of four union officials found cutting some electrical wires.
The strike was almost the last straw for a government stretched to the limit in cater ing for a conference that drew more than 100 visitors with facilities not really up to coping with much more than half that number. But, prodded by its unassuming 29-year-old president, the government, and harassed officials of the Fo rum's secretariat, the SPEC, had everything ready on lime and everything that mattered seemed to work.
Austere, informal to the ex treme, and simple, the meeting was also one of the most significant of recent years, not just on account of the New Hebrides.
All but Fiji and Nauru ac cepted the South Pacific Re gional Trade and Economic Agreement (SPARTECA), under which from next year Island countries will be able to send a much wider range of products to Australia and New Zealand free, or nearly free, of all tariff and quota barriers.
Nauru’s complaint was that it had somehow been left out of the schedule of ‘small nations' - rather strange in Nauru’s case.
Fiji is refusing to sign until disagreements with Australia over conditions for the export of tropical sawn timber, and with New Zealand over orange juice quota restrictions, have been resolved.
The Forum admitted the Federated Slates of Micronesia as a member in an observer capacity, and deferred for further study a SPEC report recommending the merger of SPEC and the South Pacific Commission. Fiji, PNG and several other countries were strongly against the merger plan.
The Forum also deferred despatching a mission to oil producing states to ask for oil supply and price concessions until terms of reference for it arc drafted and agreed.
American proposals for dumping nuclear wastes in the Pacific, possibly on an island, were condemned, and there was considerable heart-burning about the Pacific Forum Line, which, it was disclosed, will be an estimated SUSI 800 000 in the red by the end of August.
A meeting will be held in Christchurch in October to discuss how the shipping line can be bailed out of trouble.
Philip Muller, of Western Samoa, was appointed as the new director of the Forum Fisheries Agency, with Dick James of Solomon Islands as his deputy.
But PNG hinted that it might withdraw from the agency unless the organisation soon begins to deliver the ex pert technical services that PNG expected from it.
The Forum approved in prin ciple and for further study Fiji’s proposals for a South Pacific Islands Regional Devel opment Fund to supplement lendings by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and other major lending agencies, and for the establish ment of a regional radio news exchange service with an office situated in Suva.