Picking the

International Relations

Picking the loyalists

UNITED STATES embassies throughout the South Pacific are in a state of flux, as new appoin tees come on the scene, and as the US lifts the level of its diplomatic relations with the former Trust Territories.

Washington has been chuckling at the Bush Administration’s numerous minor blunders as it sweeps aside the Reagan

Administration’s Republican appointees,

and replaces them with Bush Republi cans. (Firing political ambassadors from the other party is an old American cus tom, but the practice of bouncing one set of party loyalists for another, with closer ties to the current White House, is a new wrinkle in American patronage).

The new Ambassadors to Australia and New Zealand were both criticised by Senate Democrats; neither had disting uished careers in public service, nor had they previously shown any interest in the nations involved, but both had been very helpful in raising money for the Bush campaign. Melvin Sembler, a rich Flori dian, slated to be envoy to both Australia and Nauru, had contributed US$lOO,OOO

to the Bush campaign. He made some clumsy public remarks about drugs and Australia, but his troubles were minor compared to those of Della Newman of

Seattle, Washington.

Newman, who will be US ambassador to New Zealand and Western Samoa, admitted to a newspaper reporter that she did not know the name of the then New Zealand prime minister (despite the fact that David Lange is probably the New Zealand politician with more public recognition than any in history.) Despite strenuous objections of some of the Democrats on the Senate Relations Com mittee, both Sembler and Newman were confirmed by the Senate recently, and will be on their way to their new posts soon.

Meanwhile, the next United States ambassador to Fiji, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Kiribati is going through a gentler con firmation process. Evelyn Tegen has, in the eyes of the Senate Committee, better credentials than the other two, in that she ran a business, was an elected officer of the Republican Party, and had been a state-level lobbyist for seat-belt laws in Minnesota. She also did her homework on the islands before talking about them.

The State Department’s ability to shoot itself in the foot, however, continued to show itself regarding Tegen’s appoint ment. The Department is required to send a note on each appointee to the US Senate, a body controlled by the Demo crats.

In justification for the appointment, State wrote that her “inherent Republi

can loyalty, lofty principals, and experi

enced leadership make her an excellent candidate for Ambassador (sic) to Fiji . . . .” This document emerged after Sena tor Paul Sarbanes (D. Maryland) had taken great delight in reading State De partment appointment justifications in which nearly identical language was used, supposedly by the ambassadorial candidates themselves, to support the proposed appointments of Bushies to posts in Australia and Spain.

The US has kept four ambassadors in the South Pacific, and the fourth mem ber of the set is a Reagan Administration holdover, Everett E. Bierman, the ambassador to Papua New Guinea; alone among the four he has both Republican ties and knowledge of the business, hav ing worked for the Senate Foreign Rela tions Committee prior to his posting to Port Moresby. He is also the US repre sentative to the Solomons and Vanuatu.

Meanwhile, to enhance the diplomatic positions of the former Trust Territor ies, Washington has decided to elevate the titles of its diplomats in the Marshalls and in Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). Previously Samuel B. Thomsen and Michael G. Wygant, both career foreign service officers, had been, Te

spectively, US Representative in the Mar shalls and FSM. Now that their offices have become embassies their titles are those of charge d’affaires. The State De partment has not yet decided who will fill these ambassadorships, but the chances are that these assignments will go to career people.

The US also has charge d’affaires at work in the Solomons, and in the newly opened mission in Western Samoa; they are William Warren and William Francis co 111.

Meanwhile, Jesse Manehalau, the FSM representative in Washington, and Wil fred Kendall, who plays the same role for the Marshalls are on their way to ambassador status. (Their staffs already use the term in reference to their bosses.) Both of these Associated States have extended their diplomatic networks, with ambassadors from Japan in place in Kolonia, and with FSM now having di plomatic relations with those nations as well as with the US, the Marshalls, Au stralia, Mainland China, New Zealand and PNG. The Marshalls have not quite made up their mind about reltions with the People’s Republic of China, but they have expanded their network as well. □