Pacific Report

Caledonia Councils Elect Leaders

New Caledonia’s four new regional councils met for the first time on October 6 to elect their presidents, who will sit on the executive committee heading the new Territorial Congress. As expected, the leader of the Kanak Socialist Liberation Front (FLNKS), Jean- Marie Tjibaou, was elected president of the northern regional council. His colleagues, Yeweine Yeweine and Leopold Joredie, were elected as president by the Loyalty Islands and the central regional council respectively. Jean Leques, of the right-wing anti-independence party RCPR, was elected president of the southern council. At a meeting in Noumea on October 8, RCPR man Dick Ukeiwe was elected president of the overall Territorial Congress. He received 29 votes, against 13 for Mr Tjibaou.

Electors were the members of the four new councils. (See earlier report, p. 12).

Port Moresby's Crime Rate Down

Port Moresby’s state of emergency has inflicted lasting damage on the city’s raskol gangs, according to a parliamentary committee which has been overseeing its implementation since the beginning of July. The committee reported to the Papua New Guinean Parliament that the emergency, which includes a late-night curfew, had only ever been intended as a temporary measure against crime and should be lifted on November 4. It recommended a gradual easing of emergency provisions, but suggested that road blocks and police patrols continue. Parliament was told there should be a tightening of security at corrective institutions, that an emergency provision prohibiting demonstrations and protest marches be lifted and that juveniles be separated from older prisoners in jails. The government will seek changes to the constitution to provide for the introduction of vagrancy laws aimed at stemming rural drift to the towns, which it believes exacerbates unemployment and lawless ness. The Prime Minister, Michael Somare told Parliament that critics who had doomed the state of emergency before it even began had been proved wrong. He said in the 15 weeks before the emergency there were 523 break and enters reported in Port Moresby, while in the 15 weeks since there had been only 91.

Robberies were down from 182 to 36, sexual assaults from 60 to 30, motor vehicle thefts from 194 to 26 and the weekly average of serious offences down from 64 to 12. Mr Somare said the average reduction of serious offences since the emergency began was 80 per cent. The incidence of pack rape, which had been escalating, had virtually been eliminated and there had been no crimes of violence reported during the nightly curfew hours. He said the government intended to introduce bills to allow householders to purchase tear gas, to prevent the sale of ammunition to people not holding a firearm licence, to define offensive weapons more strictly, and to give extra search powers to police operating in a declared curfew. The government also intended to introduce legislation to allow Cabinet to impose a curfew where and when necessary without having to declare a state of emergency. Mr Somare said that one of the great achievements of the state of emergency had been the capture of 100 prison escapees. Australian Associated Press.

Mara Balks At U.S. Aid Terms

Fiji’s Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara said in October he might regret some of the provisions of a proposed agreement for American aid to his country, and refuse to sign it. Ratu Mara was due to visit Washington later in the month to open the embassy being established there by Fiji. During the visit, it had been expected that he would sign an agreement making Fiji the first South Pacific country to receive direct American aid, amounting initially to about SUS 3 million a year. However, Ratu Mara said he did not like some provisions of the proposed agreement, adding that they would not be manageable if they were applied to other countries which gave aid to Fiji. Observers in Suva noted that under one clause in the proposed agreement with the U.S., Fiji would have to confer full diplomatic status as missions on American aid organisations.

Polynesian Church Slams N-Tests

The 1985 Synod of the Evangelical Church of French Polynesia

has reaffirmed its “extreme opposition” to continued French nuclear testing at Moruroa Atoll. The Synod declared in a resolution that since President Mitterrand had not replied to a letter on this subject sent by last year’s Synod, another letter would be sent, reiterating the church’s opposition to nuclear tests, and also its long-standing demand for a popular referendum on the matter to be held throughout French Polynesia. The church, the largest and most influential in the French territory, also expressed its concern about continued unrestricted immigration into the territory, the dispossession of the Maohi people of their lands through the tax regulations governing land sales, and the rising cost of living.

Islanders For Conference Games?

South Pacific Island countries may become a part of the Pacific Conference Games under a proposal being studied by conference officials following a meeting in Canberra. The Pacific Conference Games have been held every four years since 1969, most recently at Berkeley, California, last June. They comprise a full Olympic style track and field program, except the marathon, the walks, and the decathlon and heptathlon. The Canberra meeting was critical to the future of the five-nation track and field games following the announced withdrawal in August of the United States, which lost interest in them in the light of the nowadays packed international program; however, conversion of the games to a junior (under-20) competition lured the U.S. back and ensured their immediate future. The Pacific Conference Federation accepted an offer from the West Nally International Sports Promotion group to hold the next three games every two years at a huge new complex being constructed at Waikoloa on the Kohola coast of Hawaii’s “big island” starting in 1987. Not only are the Americans still in, along with Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Canada, but China was also admitted to the conference during the Canberra meeting.

South Pacific Island participation is a suggestion from Australia.

The idea would be to invite two athletes from each island group to take part in half-a-dozen events run in conjunction with the games.

They would not compete against the strong teams from the six conference member countries, just among themselves. Proponents of the idea argue that it would be entirely appropriate for the island athletes to join in what should be, granted the surroundings, one of the more colorful events on the international athletics calendar.

Details of this, and other proposals on marketing and television rights for the new-look games, will be worked out over the next few months. The multi-million dollar “Sports World” project is being financed by the giant Transcontinental Development Corporation of Santa Barbara, California. The 34-ha complex will include a stadium for athletics, cycling and football seating 35,000 specta tors, plus an indoor sports centre, four baseball diamonds, two new

golf courses, and a Grand Prix motor-racing track.

James

Shrimpton.

New Cuts In Png Public Service?

A cut of about 4000 in Papua New Guinea’s 50,000-strong public service has been called for by Public Service Minister Father John Momis. Fr Momis said on a radio program that the cuts were necessary because of the country’s difficult economic situation.

The service was last reduced in 1983, when almost 2000 public servants were retrenched, and another 400 moved to other government departments. A Radio Australia report said the idea in 1983 was to remove public servants who weren’t doing their jobs effectively.

Yale , Princeton Promote Islands Travel

A new twist to Pacific Islands travel promotion has come from an unlikely source America’s prestigious Ivy League universities.

Both Yale and Princeton Universities, arch-rivals to each other, have scheduled education-plus-travel programs in 1986 for their well-to-do alumni. The Yale program, in March, 1986, takes the alumni from San Francisco to Sydney to Port Moresby and then by cruise ship through Indonesia; the Princeton program takes place on the Hawaiian island of Maui. The Princeton program is called “An Alumni College in Hawaii” and is scheduled for January 21-29, 1986. It stresses substance rather than island-hopping,

being a colloquium on “The United States and the Pacific Powers; Partnership or Rivalry?” Seven Princeton professors, headed by Donald Stokes, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, will give lectures and lead seminars during an intensive, five-day schedule of activities. The location of the alumni college is the Hyatt Regency Maui on Kaanapali Beach. Yale’s program will take place on the cruise ship Illiria which Yale says has . .85 officers and crew serving only 135 guests ... a higher ratio of personnel to passengers than any other cruise vessel. .. ” The Illiria leaves Port Moresby on March 16, stopping the next day at Thursday Island in Torres Strait, then cruises along the coast of Papua New Guinea without stopping. The long Indonesian part of the journey, 11 days and numerous stops, concludes with the inevitable Bali. The alumni are then flown to a weekend in Hong Kong before returning to the States. The Yale tour also features a couple of professors, J. Joseph Errington, a Yale anthropologist, and Gerald Larue, an emeritus professor of archaeology at the University of Southern California. This program is one of 18 being mounted in 1986 by the Association of Yale Alumni. These outings are not cheap. The shorter Princeton session costs $ U 51595, double occupancy, and $5lO more if one travels alone. Air fare from New York would add another S7OO per individual. This is a bargain compared to the range of costs (including airfare from San Francisco) quoted by Yale; from $4695 per person to $7695 depending on the nature of the accommodation on the Illiria and on whether one was travelling alone or with a companion. The Princeton fee includes a presumably tax-deductible S2OO contribu tion to the university, while Yale’s fee includes a contribution of S3OO. The ingredients for putting together such an outing seem to be: a prestigious tour promoter (the university), one or more persons who can speak with authority about the area (the professors), and, most important, a mailing list of reasonably well-to-do likely customers (the alumni). America’s private colleges and universities pay a remarkable amount of attention to their graduates (as sources of funds, among other things) and maintain a steady pattern of mailings to the alumni. Princeton, for example, publishes a slick, well-edited 32-page publication for its graduates every week of the academic year. While neither of these programs emphasised the independent nations of the Pacific, there is always another year, and with Yale, anyway, a long list of university sponsored trips. Maybe it would be mutually helpful if Fiji chatted with the Harvard Alumni Council, and if Stanford University rang

up the Solomon Islands?

David S. North in Washington.

Rainbow Warrior: The View From Europe

When visiting Europe in the past, the only Pacific news items I have seen in the local papers have been short notices, rarely more than five lines, announcing in a matter of fact way the detonation of still another nuclear device at Moruroa. It has therefore been an unusual experience during my recent European trip (early September until well into October) to find in all French, British, German and Scandinavian newspapers, day after day, front-page stories about events taking place in such well-known Pacific places as Moruroa, Papeete, Auckland, Wellington and Canberra. The reason, of course, is the Rainbow Warrior affair. On the other hand, I cannot find anywhere in the two-foot-high pile of newspaper cuttings about the various aspects of this tragi-comic affair which has accumulated on my hotel room table a single reference to the problems, sufferings and aspirations of the people most deeply involved, i.e. the Polynesians in whose islands 112 nuclear bombs have been detonated during the short space of 20 years. Reading these articles, it is almost as if the 118 islands of French Polynesia were uninhabited except perhaps by a few lovely hula girls stretching out welcoming arms to French bigwigs, usually in gold-braided uniforms, in an occasional press photo graph. The numerous French radio, TV and newspaper reporters who were despatched to the Pacific to cover the presidential trip to Moruroa in early September continued to meet the popular demand for a good, real-life spy yarn, in never-ending instalments, and therefore paid scant attention to native problems and politics. (Well, a few of them praised the Polynesians in general terms, contrasting their friendliness and hospitality with the dourness and hostility of the Kanaka in New Caledonia, so unhappily misguided by a handful of agitators.) A feature of the coverage in the French press has been the fuss made of the two agents imprisoned in New Zealand, the so-called “Turenges”, who seem to be seen by government and public alike as valiant soldiers deserving of high decorations because “all they did was obey orders”. There is also

general agreement in France about the Greenpeace activists. They are, according to this particular “national consensus”, wittingly or unwittingly doing the work of the Russians with American money! Blithe indifference to the effects on islanders of events associated with the Rainbow Warrior was well to the fore when at the end of September the prestigious SOFRES Institute conducted a public opinion poll to find out what the French people actually thought of the whole affair. None of the questions concerned its implications for the Polynesian people. The closest the pollsters got was in the question: “Are you in favor of or opposed to France continuing its underground testing in the Pacific?” Not less than 60 per cent approved, only 24 per cent were opposed, and 16 per cent had no opinion. This represents a “national consensus”, we are told, which should be respected by all peoples in the Pacific. So far no French politician or editorialist has cared to mention the embarrassing fact that all political, civic and church leaders who count in French Polynesia have for several years now been asking the Paris government to organise a local referendum in French Polynesia to allow the people most concerned, i.e. the islanders

themselves, to decide the issue.

Bengt Danielsson in

Stockholm.

OZ WARNS U.S. ON FRENCH TESTS , TUNA Australia’s Ambassador to the United States, Rawdon Dalrymple, has highlighted the dangers to U.S. and Australian interests in the South Pacific from the perceived tolerance of the U.S. for French nuclear testing at Moruroa, and from U.S. policy on tuna fishing in the region. Speaking at a meeting of the Asia Society in New York on September 24, Mr Dalrymple said of the South Pacific: “Now in this situation where you have this huge sweep of the world’s surface containing only a number of scattered mini-states it should be possible for us as allies and with the accumulation of goodwill there is towards us, and the resources at our disposal it should be possible for us to ensure the continuing friendship and goodwill of the island states. But difficulties have emerged and I want to mention the two principal sources of difficulties. The two problem areas are nuclear issues and fear of nuclear damage of one sort or another, and secondly concern about fishing stocks and the need to exploit the one major resource the region has namely fish. Now in those two problem areas, areas of discontent and concern in the South Pacific, the two agents about which there is the most concern are respectively the Republic of France and the United States tuna fishermen’s activities in the region. There are in fact two problems to do with France in the South Pacific. One relates to their handling of the political crisis in their colony of New Caledonia and the problems which face them in what is I think an inevitable process of decolonisation. I don’t propose to discuss that and the other is the one to which I just referred, namely French policy on nuclear testing in the South Pacific. Now on that issue it seems to me the United States is seen as being less than helpful by the states of the South Pacific. And that is because the United States has tended, is seen anyway, to have tended, to side with France on the issue of nuclear testing in the South Pacific. It is considered in the region that the United States could, if it wanted to do so, exert strong influence on France to cease testing on Moruroa Atoll. 1 might say in parenthesis that it is precisely that French testing which has been a major influence in the formation of the climate of opinion in New Zealand which is now causing such anxiety to both the United States and the Australian governments in relation to the future of Anzus.” On the tuna problem, Mr Dalrymple said: “It seems to me that it is an urgent matter from the point of view of our interests in the South Pacific that the United States in consultation, I would hope, with Australia and New Zealand, presses ahead either with making changes to your current legislation governing the activities of your tuna fishermen and/or that you make haste to get into place the multilateral agreement on fishing in the South Pacific which along with some new aid measures would result in benefits to the South Pacific countries from United States fishing involvement in the South Pacific which would quite clearly exceed any potential benefits from the involvement of the Soviet Union.

Now that is something which you could do at very small financial cost. We are talking about small amounts of money. But it is something which no one else can do for you or cannot do completely for you. Certainly Auxtralia can’t, if only because we are not a major high-seas fishing country. We don’t have ships like the Jeanette Diana with all the modern technology and we aren t in that league; we’re not experts and we can’t give these countries the sort of technology which you and the Japanese can.”