Taking the battle to Washington

Papua New Guinea

By David North

WHEN Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Rabbie Namaliu visited the United States he touched all the bases a meeting with President Bush, dinner with former Democratic Presidential candidate Walter Mondale, chats with Congressman, the environ mentalists and Texas investors and two press conferences.

PNG has been independent for 15 years, but this was the first time that a sitting Prime Minister had made the trip and it went well for him and his small entourage.

His motives were dual: first, to assure American investors that the Port Mores by Government was in charge, and that mineral investments were safe; and, secondly, to build stronger contacts for his country at the highest levels in

Washington.

The morning after his meeting with President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker he reported that the three of them spent three-quarters of an hour covering a number of matters of mutual interest. They discussed “ . . . defense, the continuing and valuable role played by the [US] Peace Corps in Papua New Guinea . . . and the possibility of educa tional scholarships at all upper levels of the Papua New Guinea Educational

System.”

In the first of his press conferences he sounded upbeat about the prospects for a peaceful solution of the stand-off in Bougainville. He blamed the underlying difficulties with landowners as being based on “arrangements made in colo nial times,” and said that his government will not accept secession for Bouganivlle.

He reported in detail the results of the economic blockade of the area, saying that some schools were open and some closed, and that “only certain hospital services were operating.”

The Prime Minister, who had stopped in Houston, Texas, to talk with mining investors, said that Chevron was submit ting a proposal to the PNG government about an oil field in the Highlands, which would, if successful, lead to the construction of a pipeline to the sea. He was also optimistic about off-shore ex ploration of what he called “substantial resources of natural gas.”

On other economic matters he talked about the Government’s decision to cut the budget from K 1.3 billion to K 1.2 billion, both to reduce the budgetary de ficit as well as the trade deficit; he said that, if need be, the Government would

consider increasing taxes, but saw no need for that in the immediate future.

One of the techniques for increasing revenue he cited are “assets sales”; in cluded in that category are the sales of “certain ventures . . . which are not paying dividends . . . and lands and buildings owned by the Government which are no longer needed . . He also said that PNG and the International Monetary Fund were in agreement about a line of credit, to help stabilise the PNG currency.

Following the first press conference, which was principally attended by Au stralian journalists, the Prime Minister moved on to Capitol Hill, and to his meetings with Congressman. He talked, among others, with Stephen J. Solarz (Democrat, New York), the chairman of the Asian and the Pacific Affairs sub committees of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, as well as the ranking Re publican on the full Committee, William

Broomfield (Republican Michigan),

and the delegates from Guam and American Samoa, Ben Blaz (Republican) and Eni F.H. Faleomavaega (Democrat).

The Prime Minister’s second press conference was held at the offices of the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation Foundation which was pleased with the recent PNG decision to place a morator ium on new logging licenses for the next two years. Conservation organisations

are currently placing great emphasis on

retaining the world’s rain forests, which are seriously threatened, worldwide, by economic development, and the PNG de cision was an important one for the en vironmentalists.

Namaliu took advantage of the con servation forum to call upon the nations that consume tropical lumber to restrict imports, saying: “If we are to effectively improve the management of our forests and to better conserve our natural re sources, we will need the fullest support of the consuming countries to better control the activities of their own timber trade.”

Saying that PNG’s timber industry had been “running amok”, the Prime Minis ter explained: “We will need the fullest support from these countries in controll ing trading fraud, such as transfer pric ing and misrecording of shipments . . .

It would be a major benefit if these countries could . . . impose their own restrictions upon tropical timber not sup

plied from genuine sustainable yield pro

jects.” □