Vanuatu records in Noumea

The diplomatic row between France and Vanuatu (PIM Mar p 5) is fouling things up in areas far removed from diplomacy proper.

For example, among the nine senior French public servants withdrawn from Vanuatu in reprisal for the expulsion of Ambassador Yves Rodrigues was one who was serving as director of Vanuatu's civil aviation.

With him when he took off for Noumea in February he apparently carried various key documents, including one containing the technical specifications relating to the con struction of Port-Vila’s Bauerfield airport.

This document is of crucial importance in the Vanuatu Government’s urgent efforts to establish its own airline in collaboration with Ansett Airlines of Australia.

Visiting Ansett technicians were stumped in February when they learned that no one could tell them what was the Load Classification Number (LCN) of Bauerfield’s runway. Until they know it they will be unable to decide whether the runway will be safe for use by the airline’s Boeing 727 aircraft.

In experts’ language the problem is this: is the LCN 42 or 49? If it’s one, the 727 s can be used. If it’s the other they can’t.

Vanuatu Transport Minister John Naupa has urgently asked the French for the return of the documents. But the French are understood to have replied that the documents cannot be returned without special permission from Paris!

Making a fresh determination of the LCN is a costly and time-consuming business, involving the use of extremely expensive equipment.

According to reports, similar problems are being faced in efforts to set up a new national authority to control and develop Vanuatu’s water reticulation system. Charts of the existing underground system have disappeared local eeople believe in the same way as the Bauerfield documents.