‘Hostility towards France’ Debray

France’s proposed South Paci fic university (PIM last issue) was discussed at the first meet ing of the South Pacific Coun cil, set up by President Mitter rand to clean up France’s regio nal image.

With Walter Lini at large elsewhere in the country claim ing headlines for his anti-French stance, Mr Mitterrand presided over the council’s first meeting.

State secretary for higher education, Roger-Gerard Schwartzenberg said the uni versity would be based in Tahiti with classes also being held in New Caledonia. But he said Paris was open to requests to instal facilities in independent states in the nregion.

Asked if the establishment of the university could be seen as a means of insulating the 330,000 French citizens in the Pacific from over 20 million English speakers in the same

region, Mr Schwartzenberg re plied; “This is simply a measure to mark the presence of our culture, our science.”

Science Minister Hubert Cu rien said the council also adopted 50 projects aimed at boosting scientific co-operation with island states in ocean re search, medicine, energy and the environment.

He said France was in terested in working with scien tists from Australia as well as the US in those fields.

The council, whose secretary general is former Che Guevara confidant Regis Debray, was set up by President Mitterrand after a prolonged campaign against the French regional presence in general and its nuclear testing program in particular by the South Pacific Forum countries.

Debray had earlier noted during a recent visit to the region a “certain feeling of

hostility towards France by

English-speaking people

there. ”

In a recent interview with the Paris daily Liberation Debray was unabashedly nationalistic.

He saw no reason to give up testing “in our home of Mororua. ”

“If France wants an auton omous foreign policy, it must have its own strategic means,” he said.

Debray attributed antagon ism towards the French pre sence in the Pacific to “an Anglo-Presbyterian morality” which he said was spread through the region by the Uni versity of Fiji. (He presumably meant the University of the South Pacific).

He said the forum had used the idea of making the region nuclear-free as a pretext for destroying the French influ ence, “of rubber-stamping un

ilateral Anglo-Saxon domina tion.”

“France has a right to be an equal member of the Pacific family,” he declared, adding that the seas would be a source of great riches in the next century.

Regis Debray: Anglo-Saxon domination' spread by USP.