membership

Micronesians seek membership

THE University of the South Pacific may have two more Pacific island countries as members next year.

They are the Federated States of Mic ronesia and the Marshall Islands.

“We’ve been talking to them for two, three years now about them becoming full members,” says Geoffrey Gaston, the university’s Vice-Chancellor. “Council took a decision in 1986, because they made some approaches to us, that they would be very welcome to come in as full members of the university.”

But Fiji’s coups in 1987 halted talks briefly. Now they are talking again, Gas ton says. “The door is open to them to come and join at any time,” he says. AIS the countries that are members of the South Pacific Forum are members of the University of the South Pacific with the exception of Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, each of which has its own universities, and the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. Meanwhile they do send their students to the University of the South Pacific as foreign students. “So that real ly suggests that the Marshalls and the FSM should be part of this as they’re part of other regional organisations,” says Gaston. “Politically, I think, they would like to be because they want to identify themselves as Pacific island countries.

“It’s much better if they were in and we can have 13 flags rather then 11. I wouldn’t say it would help financially be cause we’d also have to undertake obliga tions to them. We probably have to think of setting up extension centres there, and things like that.”

David Panuelo, the deputy chief of mission at the Federated States of Mic ronesia Embassy in Suva, says full mem bership will mean that they can send their students for about half as much as they are paying as non-members.

They are paying S9OOO a student a year whereas the 11 member countries are paying about S4OOO a student a year.

Panuelo says that his Embassy has re commended to the administration in Pohnpei to join the university. The final decision will have to be made by Con gress, which is expected to convene its budget session next month.

The current university members in clude the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, Nauru, the Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Tokelaus, Western Samoa, Tonga, Niue and the Cooks. □