step for Compact

Palauan vote last step for Compact

Voters in the Republic of Palau were due to cast their ballots on February 24 on a revised com pact of free association with the United States that could bring their country self-government and US$l billion in American economic assistance.

The Palauan government and US officials signed the revised compact and 10 sub sidiary agreements in Koror mid-January.

The plebiscite will be observed by a delegation from the United Nations and will be the fourth such testing of public opinion in the tiny north Pacific territory to have been held in the last three years.

James Berg, economic advis er for the US Office for Micronesian Status Negotia tions, said in Honolulu on Janu ary 12 that the White House had also received legislation involving self-government for the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia.

The bill was signed by President Reagan on January 14.

In the general bonanza of aid due to fall upon Micronesia with the successful completion of the wearisomely debated agree ment on self-government and subsequent relationship with the US, the FSM and the Marshall Islands will receive a total of U 552.42 billion over 15 years.

The other part of the UN Trust Territory administered by the US since 1947, the North ern Marianas, voted in 1975 in favor of a commonwealth status with the US.

With all of this finally, hopefully, done, the US admin istration will apply, probably in April, for termination of the trusteeship, the last of its kind in the world. But that may not be an end to the debate. The termination application must first go to the Trusteeship Council at the UN and is there likely to be approved. Then it must go to the Security Council where, in past years at least, the Soviet Union has said it will veto the proposal.

But to get the full termination

process going by April Palau will have to complete its plebis cite, and approve the measure, no later than March 15.

Palau is the last of the four members of the Trust Territory to agree on a compact with the US, under which the countries will be independent, but will leave such matters as defence to the Americans in return for

an annual fee. FSM and the Marshalls approved the com pact in a general vote in 1983 but Palau held out, mainly because of an article in the Palau constitution which bans nuclear weapons, and the tran sit of ships carrying them.

A considerable and compli cated debate, and much lob bying, developed in Washing

ton and in Palau over efforts to satisfy the island’s constitutional provision, and still allow the US free-range for its Pacific navy.

Under the accord reached by Congress in December the US agrees not to ’’use, test, store, or dispose of nuclear, toxic, chemical gas or biological weapons intended for use in warfare” in Palau’s territory or waters. Congress, controller of the US government’s purse strings, still has to approve the Reagan administration’s plans to give the FSM and the Mar shalls a combined U 55299.27 million in 1986 and U 55146.12

million in 1987.

Staff Writer.