Palau pushed gently toward change

The Region

The long-lasting Micronesian stand-off may be drawing to a close. lan Williams reports.

THE UN Trusteeship Council met in May to consider its last remaining charge the Repub lic of Palau. For the first time, the US offered to consider indepen dence, and hinted to Palauans that something must change.

On the Palauan side, President Ngiratkel Etpison told the Trusteeship Council of his confidence that the US would agree with a recommendation for a joint working party to identify, discuss and recomrxiend appropriate action.

The deal to terminate the trusteeship in December included a US promise to Soviets in closed-door Security Council sessions that they had no plans to build bases anywhere in the Pacific Trust Territory. Stella Guerra, US Assistant Secretary of State repeated the pledge to the Trusteeship Council saying the US did not intend to exercise its rights to do so under Trusteeship or a Compact.

That should open the way for trade-offs between the Compact and the Consti tution. It also deprives Palau of leverage in extorting better financial terms from Compact renegotiations. In the post- Cold War era, Palau as a difficult-to-sink aircraft carrier lost its strategic relevance for the US one reason Guerra and US Ambassador James Wilkinson were happy to offer independence.

Ambassador Wilkinson explained to PIM Free Association had defence impli cations which independence did not.

“You can get to almost the same place by independence and a defence treaty, so we are prepared to discuss options.”

It is another matter whether the Palauan people would be so happy with independence, which could end up as the Compact without the cash.

Washington Overture US State Department representative in Koror, Lloyd Moss, sent a cable in April, clearly intended to be leaked, which said rational economic reasons existed for Palau not to ratify the compact of free association. Standards of living in FSM and Marshalls already lower than Pa lau s may decline further when funds from their respective Compacts of Free Association dry up and why should Palau, which is getting Sl6 million a year from the US, follow suit? He points out that the degree of Palauan independence already gives them much of what they would gain despite recent US govern ment attempts to exert more control.

His recommended the US set a date for the end of Trusteeship, to encourage

Palauans to make up their mind. “Inde finite prolongation of the last trusteeship on Earth with its attendant unpredict able financial burdens, ambivalent pol itical status, and legal problems, appears too high a price for palliation of concerns that a hypothetical independent Palauan government might some day deny the visit/transit of a US ship or aircraft,” he concluded.

The Reaction On April 29 the Ibedul, Yukata Gib bons, and Acting Rekli John Ngiraked,

on behalf of the Council of Chiefs and the Council of Governors, moved a class action suit in Washington against the US Interior Department. The com plaint in the District Court

of Washington DC alleges

that Interior Order 3142 took away self-government powers from Palau, going against the intention of the Trusteeship agreement, ac

cepted by Congress in

1947, which bound the US to encourage self government. Order 3142 gives extensive powers of interference in Palauan af fairs. The US says this is response to the General

Accounting Office Report

on the IPSECO and re lated affairs which docu mented corruption and lack of judgment in some of

Palau’s dealings. Some Palauans, includ

ing petitioners to the Trusteeship Coun

cil, say it is a move to force Palau to come to terms with the Compact. The real answer is probably a mixture of both.

The Ibedul does admit to some self interest in the claims. The order prohibits

developments in the environmentally

sensitive Rock Islands, where he owns property, without a public law from the Palau government. Another plaintiff, John Gibbons, Governor of Koror State, mentions an agreement with private investors to fund a Master Plan for his state in return for “certain preferential development rights", which is inhibited by 3142’s insistence on a National Master Development Plan. Some opponents questioned whether the motivation for litigation owed more to property devel opment than national development.

New York: The Ibedul and his co

plaintiffs were also petitioners at the Trusteeship Council, where they made the same points, alleging that the islands had been reduced to a “welfare state” with free enterprise stifled.

They told PIM that they had agreed jointly with President Etpison to intro duce the law-suit in Washington when the order was introduced, but they had only discovered in April that he was not joining them. “We have the support of the people and of the law and a lot of support in Congress”.

Hoping that the lawsuit will break the logjam, they say that the US should set a date about five years ahead. Before then it should “inject the capital necess-

ary to build the infrastructure”.

Professor Roger Clard of the Interna tional League for Human Rights, echo ing the call for withdrawal .of 3142, asked why it was not felt necessary to enact more control earlier, at the time of the “IPSECO scam” or in 1987, when there were murders over the Compact issue.

Bykow; PIM asked Ambassador

Dmitry Bykow, the Soviet Representa

tive on the Trusteeship Council, what had led to their agreement to the partial termination last year. “In 1986 we insisted that termination had to go to the Security Council. We never said we would veto the termination there, but the US was scared that we would, so never brought it there. Even a year ago, although there were less harsh words in the Trusteeship Council, but the same substance confrontational”.

He said the breakthrough was due to two factors: the new political thinking

after the Cold War and, in December, US advice that it did not intend to build future bases in the Pacific Territory.

Did they have any preference between Free Association and independence?

“The emphasis on free choice has been stressed, even in the Security Council, I but it is for them to argue over terms. But the new situation makes it easier to take into account the will of the people ... It is also, I think, the first lime it has been suggested that independence is an op tion.”

What about the rumours of a unilat eral termination of trusteeship? “Ter mination is of course for the Security Council that’s what the deadlock was between ’B6 and ; 90.”

Uherbelau: Victor Uherbelau, Foreign Minister of Palau, explained that when Free Association was devel oped back in 1969 it was modelled on New Zealand’s relationship with Cook Islands and Niue, but with the addition of control of foreign relations excluding defence and security.

He cannot understand the logjam over the Nuclear or the land-use provisions.

“They have always told us that there is no future intention of using the land, but they want the option. It’s so ephemeral.”

And he does not necessarily accept Moss’s contention that the Compact is a less eligible option than the current status. He suggested that it was better to have 15 years assured funding than the present situation in which, “so far we have to beg Washington ever)’ year to lobby for finance, so what Lloyd Moss said was premature, a value judgment.”

What did he think of the threats to terminate? “You can’t just terminate the trusteeship or you’d create a void, a vacuum . . . (but) during the talks at the State Department two weeks ago they spoke of five or six years from now. We do have to have a target date on which to work.”

As he told the Trusteeship Council, agreement was in reach if the US could agree to take the defence aspects of the Compact into a separate treaty, and ensure that that treaty had no nuclear options. If Free Association failed, the only viable option was independence. “If mutually agreed terms means conditional independence, then that’s no different from the Compact of Free Association. 1 erritorial and Commonwealth status are ruled out because of the lack of control over citizenship and hence

land ownership.”

W hat about the IPESCO debt, where the bankers are just waiting for the C ompact Funds to pay off their claims?

“W'e wanted a deal that would make u all self-financing. And we said the Compact funds would not be used as collateral for the loan. If. . . the project was self financing like they said, then why did they need collateral?” □