“Sky watch” on Soviets

It sounded like a fantastic story suspicious Soviet fishing boats, unidentified foreign warships, aircraft buzzing the remote islands of Kiribati but was it?

The Soviets are certainly fishing Kiribati’s waters under an agreement which came into effect on Octo ber 15, last year, and whe ther they are totally behav ing themselves is probably known only to the Russians themselves.

As far as Mr Brian Orme, official spokesman for Kiri bati’s opposition Christian Democtatic Party is con cerned, they are not, and their motives are no good at all.

They will monitor com munications between Aus tralia and the United States, collect data and may even eavesdrop on American missile testing just to the north at Kwaja lein in the Marshall Islands, he says.

He says he has heard

reports of a mysterious air craft carrier and of jets which swoop low over Kiri bati’s islands, but the Kiri bati government says it has no concrete evidence of anything untoward.

As far as it knows the Soviet fishing boats have been behaving them selves, says Peter Timeon, senior secretary to the Kiri bati Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

What is fact, however, is that the Kiribati govern ment, headed by President Tabai, survived a budget debate by which the Opposition had hoped it would be able to unseat it.

Another fact is that Kiri bati is getting licence fees from the Soviet fishing boats without the apparent wrangle that was encoun tered while dealing with the American Tunaboat Assocaition when its purse seiners were working those waters.