Pacific Report

Png Conned’,

Inquiry Told

Evidence could justify a finding that Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister, Michael Somare, had acted in an “un-statesman like manner” in personally attending a drug search of an Australian commercial aircraft, the Peldale Commission of Inquiry; was told in Port Moresby on November 5.

The commission was also told PNG had been “conned” in buying Israeli Arava rpilitary aircraft for SAI4 million. The remarks were made by counsel assisting the inquiry, Tony Mullumby. But, Mr Mullumby said, in his view there was insufficient evidence to prove that there had been irregular commissions in purch ase of the Aravas and the sale of a luxurious government jet. The inquiry, headed by Justice Theodore Bredmeyer, was appointed by the government to investigate allegations about the aircraft deals and Mr Somare’s role in the drugs search at Port Moresby airport on March 6 of an aircraft operated by the Sydney based company Peldale. Mr Mullumby, in his final address said a common thread in all the terms of reference was the involve ment of Peldale representatives, John Johnson and John Lawrence Aston, as well as the Melbourne-based Arava regio nal sub-agent Sonnie Lipshut. Mr Mullum by said that the PNG Government could have saved Kina 900,000 (about SAI.3 million) by dealing directly with the Israeli Government to buy the Arava, rather than going through agents.

French Warrior’

Inquiry Sunk

A French parliamentary investigation into the sinking of the Greenpeace ship Rain bow Warrior in Auckland on July 10 has been abandoned. Officials in Paris said that the National Asembly’s Laws Committee, which must endorse any parliamentary investigation, had rejected formal demands from the Socialists and Communists for a commission of inquiry. The committee said an inquiry would be useless after the two main Opposition parties, the RPR and the UDF, had refused to take part. Prime Minister Laurent Fabius announced the investigation in September, after admitting that French secret agents had been re sponsible for blowing up the Rainbow Warrior shortly before it was to leave Auckland to demonstrate against French nuclear testing at Moruroa, French Polynesia. Among reasons for shelving the inquiry was no doubt the fact that the Rainbow Warrior issue had practically disappeared from the French public arena by early November, when the “no probe” announcement was made. Recalling a remark by Voltaire that “it was impossible to get the French to be interested in anything for more than 10 days”, political commentator Jean-Marie Benoist wrote: “First, Greenpeace was killed by (the October visit to France by Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev. Then Gorbachev was killed by the hijacking of the Achille Lauro,

and nobody particularly remembers Greenpeace any more.” Benoist noted that the extent to which Greenpeace had lost the attention of the public was reflected in the absence of any reaction to the dramatic claim by the new head of the French intelligence agency, General Rene Imbot, that he had uncovered a plot to “destroy” the intelligence agency. This announcement, made simultaneously by the general on all three of France’s television networks, had been followed by almost absolute silence, and there had been no public demand for further in formation. Writing in the London-based weekly, The Spectator, on October 5, another commentator, John Ralston Saul, a close student of the role of the French military in the country’s political life, didn’t even oother to argue the point that the army was the moving force behind the Rainbow Warrior sinking. Saul wrote: “The idea to sink the ship can only have originated at the officer level. Whether it was approved by the minister hardly matters; either way he was treated like a pushover. As for the stupidity of the secret services, it should surprise no one . . .

Secret services are filled with second-rate people of limited imagination. Having failed, it is not surprising that they should attempt to tar the government with their own incompetence.” Saul calculates that since 1830, French military officers have on average brought down, or have sought to bring down, the ruling government on average once every 13 years.

U.S. Diplomatic

Ties Soon Lini

Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Fr Walter Lini has predicted that his country will soon establish diplomatic links with the United States. He said in late October his visit to the United States for the 40th anniversary sessions of the United Nations had enabled him to have discussions with American officials in New York, and that these talks had improved the atmosphere between the two countries. Asked whether the decision would also mean the establish ment of ties with the Soviet Union, Fr Lini said the possibility was there, but that relations with America would come first.

President Deroburt

In ‘Moral’ Victory

Nauru’s President Hammer Deßoburt on October 31 “won” a seven-year-long, SUS2O million defamation suit in a Hon olulu court. But he is unlikely to pick up a cent in damages. President Deßoburt took the action over a 1978 report in the Guam-based Pacific Daily News alleging that he had lined up a secret loan from Nauru to a group in the Southern Marshall Islands who wanted to form a breakaway government. Defendants were the owners of Pacific Daily News, the giant U.S.

Gannett Corporation. The court heard that the loan had in fact been made, but that it was not secret, and that, most important, Deßoburt himself was not in office at the time. Deßoburt won the case in the sense

that the court found that the report was “false” and “damaging” to him. But it did not find, as U.S. laws require it to do before a public figure such as Deßoburt can be awarded damages, that the article was written with “actual malice”. Among character witnesses called by Deßoburt was the former New Zealand prime minis ter Sir Robert Muldoon. Observers in Honolulu estimate President Deßoburt’s costs in the long-drawn saga at between SUS 3 and $4 million. It is understood they are being met by the Republic of Nauru.

From a Special Correspondent in Hon olulu.

Kenilorea Lashes

France At U N.

Sir Peter Kenilorea, prime minister of Solomon Islands, told the United Nations General Assembly in October that France was pursuing “imperialistic” policies in the South Pacific, His outspoken attack on French policies on both New Caledonia and on nuclear testing was the high point of his trip through the United States, the Bahamas and London. His UN speech was covered carefully by the New York Times and other publications. The prime minister criticised France’s continuing claim to sovereignty over New Caledonia, and said that his country “condemns and deplores” a French military buildup in the territory.

He called the French claims to the island “colonialistic in all aspects”. Regarding the nuclear question, Sir Peter said that the heavy reliance of the South Pacific nations on marine resources was one of the main reasons for their concern about nuclear testing. If nuclear tests are as safe as France says they are, he asked “Why can’t the French Government carry out its tests in France?” Sir Peter said that “certain technicalities” had caused a delay in the signing of the South Pacific Nuclear-Free Zone Treaty by Solomon Islands. Despite these delays he said that his nation’s policy was “not to allow any vessels and aircraft which are nuclear-powered, or are capable of carrying nuclear weapons, into its waters, airspace and ports”. During a week in New York he did not come to Washington Sir Peter conferred with the Secretary-General of the UN, Peru’s Javier Perez de Cuellar, and with the President of the 40th General Assembly, Jaime de Pinies, the Spanish Permanent Repre sentative to the UN. After the visit to New York, Sir Peter and several other Pacific island leaders repaired to another island capital, resort-studded Nassau in the Baha mas, for a meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government. Among others present were Michael Somare of Papua New Guinea, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara of Fiji, and Father Walter Lini of Vanuatu.

While the heads of government were conferring in Nassau, their UN delegations were voting in a contested election for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The opposing candidates were Liberia and Ghana, two English-speaking, West African nations ruled by fairly new military dictatorships; Liberia, backed by the US and the Organisation of African

States, eventually lost to Ghana, a Com monwealth member supported by the Soviet Union, among others. In the odd tradition of the United Nations, the four votes were done secretly, and neither sources in the US State Department nor the Pacific Island UN missions would speculate on whether the island nations supported the American candidate or the Commonwealth member. The five Pacific nation members of the UN are Fiji, PNG, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Western Samoa. From David North in Washington.

Oil Riches Around

Corner For Png?

Papua New Guinea is poised to become a major oil producer by world standards if a series of huge structures being tested in the Southern Highlands measure up to seismic indications. Attention has centred on the Juha and Mananda structures, which are just two of at least 15 geological formations regarded as ideal petroleum-bearing chambers. Advances in petroleum search technology have been spectacular since the first well was drilled in PNG just after World War I, but during that period no major strike has ever been made. Now all that is changing with immense potential significance for PNG. “What we know is that there is a major hydrocarbon province up there,” says Jock Cluff, principal oil analyst at Brisbane stockbroker, Wilson & Co. Wilsons, who take a specialist interest in oil stocks, have been monitoring oil exploration in PNG. Cluff believes that the two current wells, Juha No. 3 and Man anda No. 3, which have reached target depth and are testing in oil strata, could show commercial values larger than any existing Australian field. For instance, the Mananda structure is over 40 km long.

Cluff anticipates that if Mananda is as large as early indications suggest despite drawing water in the first two of five levels being tested in Mananda No. 3 the Australian-American drilling consortium could see a pre-tax profit of SUSI.S billion in the first full year of production in 1991.

Of this PNG’s treasury would draw off SUS77S million in super taxes and income tax. This boost to the economy would not only be enough to wipe out the Australian aid component of the national budget which accounts depending on analysis for between 25 per cent and 30 per cent, but would leave sufficient for an annual trade surplus of up to SUSSOO million. An indication of how rich this would make PNG is that this first-year budget surplus would pay for the construc tion of a highway linking Port Moresby with the northern side of the island.

Walter Birchett.

New Party For

Solomons

Solomon Islands has a new political party.

Formed in October, it is called the Solo mon Islands Nationalist Front for Progress (NFP), and has been set up by a leading Opposition MP, Andrew Nori, who repre sents West Are Are. According to Mr Nori, it will provide an open forum for people who wish to seek solutions to land disputes. The NFP would abolish the

existing system ot provincial government, and establish a direct link between central government and area councils. Mr Nori, a lawyer, said the NFP would hold a national convention at the end of November.

Satan’ Accused In

Church Row

Church politics can often be at the centre of community issues in the Pacific a fact which the Anglican Archbishop of the Church of Melanesia, Norman Palmer, has recently discovered. Palmer lost his provin cial secretary, Ambrose Bugotu, in an unseemly upheaval which saw demonstra tors march through the streets of Honiara in mid-September demanding the archbishop’s resignation as well. The con flict centred on the relocation of Honiara’s All Saints church, whose congregation had been collecting for a new chapel only to discover that the archbishop, advised by Bugotu, wanted to develop the land for commercial purposes. Palmer and Bugotu, who are both of Melanesian descent, were accused of being overwhelmed by the advice of their white financial advisers.

Confronted by the 2000 demonstrators who had paraded through Honiara’s streets before assailing him on the steps of his church, Archbishop Palmer claimed: “There are traitors and Satan has been let loose to try to fight against the church of God.” He defended his secretary as a dedicated individual, prepared to work “48 hours without stopping”. “I see nothing wrong within the Church of Melanesia,” he said in answer to critics. Palmer, according to a close adviser, “could have handled it differently,” but in the end, his secretary fell victim to the angry parishioners and was removed by the church synod.

Walter Birchett.

Booker Prize

To Keri Hulme

New Zealand author Keri Hulme has won Britain’s best known and most valuable literary award, the Booker Prize. The aw'ard was made for Ms Hulme’s novel, The Bone People. The work, which is said to have been in the writing for 12 years, is a long prose poem about Maori mytns and personal relationships. The Booker Prize is worth about $A21,000.

Islander Women Get

The Papeete Chop

People are still talking in Tahiti about the strange events of mid-September in which two Islands women one a Maori, the other Fijian were served with expulsion orders within hours of each other, and escorted to departing aircraft by immigra tion police. The first was Tuaiwa Kereopa, better known in New Zealand as Eva Rickard. She arrived with a group of five others, including Father Bernard Denehy, a Catholic priest, and four trade unionists, one of them a Tokelauan. They were on their way back to New Zealand after visiting Nicaragua. Before they left the airport each was presented with a docu ment to sign pledging that under no circumstances would he or she take part in any demonstration, or make any public statement, during their short stay. No one

agreed to sign. Later the same day they took part in a candlelight procession in support of Greenpeace organised by the Mayor of Faaa, Oscar Temaru. Eva Rick ard and Mr Temaru each addressed the meeting, at which several hundred people were present, and the quiet affair ended with a minute’s silence in honor of the slain Rainbow Warrior photographer, Fernando Pereira, and a prayer spoken by a deacon of the Evangelical Church of French Polynesia. The next morning, as her group was at the airport ready to leave, an expulsion order from the high commission er was served on Eva Rickard, forbidding her from visiting French Polynesia at any time in the future. Her companions were not served with similar orders, although they too had taken part in the march and subsequent meeting. But the most curious thing was that the next day, September 17, another Pacific Island woman, Tinai Nakita Anna Sovaia, from Fiji, who had been seen and photographed in the front ranks of the Faaa procession, left the territory escorted to the aircraft by immigration police armed with an expulsion order. It was only to be expected that a journalist who had been present at both the procession and the expulsion of Tania Nakita Anna Sovaia should make a connection between the two events. As a footnote to the journalist’s article, which appeared in a local news paper, the high commissioner explained that the second expulsion was for purely administrative reasons, the Fiji woman’s visa having run out some time before, and not having been renewed. In view of her unwillingness to leave, and after several warnings, the high commissioner ex plained, he had no option but to issue an expulsion order against her. Despite these explanations, many in Tahiti see a link between these two identical actions which followed so quickly upon each other after the demonstration. Marie-Therese Danielsson in Papeete.

The Weevil That

Saved The Sepik

A tiny black weevil was the star of a documentary film produced by Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and screened by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on October 29. For this insect saved Papua New Guinea’s mighty Sepik River from strangulation by a water weed called Saluinia molesta, which originated in Brazil and has now spread to Asia and the Pacific. The Sepik is the lifeblood of an extensive area of PNG, but by 1980, the weed covered 500 square kilometres of the river, choking access to villages and de stroying vital fishing. Nothing seemed capable of killing it. Then, in 1981, a CSIRO research team discovered a weevil which attacked the weed and kept it in check. After extensve tests in Australia, particularly at a lake near Mount Isa also threatened by the weed, the weevil was introduced into the Sepik. Within 18 months, the weevil was triumphant with the weed retreating to the river bank. The CSIRO team was awarded the UNESCO Science Prize of $15,000 for its work, the first time the award had been given to Australia.