‘Low-key’ U.S.

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‘Low-key’ U.S. role in Pacific

Two US citizens from very different backgrounds here present very different views of the US role in the Pacific in the 1980 s. Dr EVELYN COLBERT of the US State Department speaks in Suva of the ‘low-key’ role her government plans to play in the region, while Hawaiian poet WAYNE KAUMUALII WESTLAKE writes from Honolulu of what he sees as much less benevolent US intentions in the region.

America's role in the affairs of the South Pacific will continue to be a low-key one, according to a US foreign affairs expert.

Dr Evelyn Colbert, until re cently deputy assistant sec retary of the US Stale Depart ment's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told a meeting in Suva in October that her country wanted to avoid being pul in a dominating position in the area. ‘There is a broader, rather amorphous concern that while we might be nicer than the Russians, we are awfully big and all we really want is to do it by ourselves,' she said. ‘I don't think that is true, but it is not unnatural that people feel that way.’ ‘lt is up to us to make it clear that those suspicions are un founded.' Dr Colbert, who retired from the US State Department re cently after 37 years with it, was speaking to a local audi ence about US interests in the South-west Pacific, and how it related to her country’s East Asian policy.

America's view of the region had begun changing in 1976, when it saw that the emergence of independent stales was cre ating a different situation, she said.

Russian approaches at this lime had caused a flurry of concern in the Slate Depart ment.

But this had receded when it was realised that reports of Russian intentions were exag gerated.

A firm Soviet fooling in the region was regarded now as ‘an unlikely development,’ Dr Colbert said.

Talking about objections to US policy on tuna fishing rights which had led to the South

Pacific Forum's exclusion of her country from the regional fisheries agency. Dr Colbert said the US has since received indications from some Forum members, particularly Papua New Guinea, that they wanted the US to be part of a larger fishing organisation. ‘We will be very interested in hearing what that plan is,' she said.

‘We would prefer a regulat ory organisation.' It looked as if the 1981 target for completing agreements with the remaining US Trust Territories the Marshalls, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia would not now be attained because of the lengthy legal processes in volved.

But after what are known as the Compacts of Free Associ ation with them had been completed they would be free to run their foreign and other affairs provided that anything touching on defence matters had the sanction of the US Government.

The US hoped that the three territories would be admitted as full members of the Forum, but this depended on whether Fo rum members would accept them as being really indepen dent. From a news report in The Fiji Times.