Diplomacy:

Pacific style

By lan Williams

Thej South Pacific is now as embroiled in the global diplomatic system as it is in the global climate changes. For a start, its 50th anniversary session of the United Nations General Assembly was the first at which the Forum itself had observers, with their won seats, alongside bodies like the Organisation for African Unity, the Vatican, the PLO and the European Union. The session showed as never before how votes and positions on one subject can affect support from others countries on issues that Forum countries feel strongly about.

It also showed quite conclusively why French is no longer the language of diplo macy, but has been transformed into the tongue of threats and bluster. The nuclear issue has had Paris pulling out all the stops to blunt the world-wide upsurge of opposi tion to the tests at Mururoa. Even so, a res olution in the GA’s Fourth Committee con : demning the tests was passed comfortably, with very few countries voting with France - although far too many were browbeaten or bribed into abstention. The voting was 95 for, 12 against, and 45 abstentions.

When French President Jacques Chirac is prepared to risk ruptures with major allies like Italy and Holland, by refusing to meets their heads of state, then it is not sur prising that the pressure put upon weaker brethren is heavy. One can gauge how suc cessful it was by the absence of the Seychelles, Mauritius and Vanuatu from the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, which was widely ascribed to French pressure - or however one would describe the huge aid package that Vanuatu’s Maxim-Carlot brought back from Paris.

Vanuatu was of course also absent for the vote on the French tests, but Vanuatu’s delegate is so often absent, that his exas perated Pacific colleagues are never sure whether it is on principle or just because he doesn’t care. “He’s too busy watching the elections back home,” suggested one cynical Pacific colleague, who last year had tried to make allowances for him. It is a sad fallback from the high regard that Vanuatu was once held in at the United Nations. Luckily, the other delegations are more than making up for it and all have been forcefully active on the test issue.

The Forum includes members of the

Commonwealth, of the Alliance of Small Island States, and in Papua New Guinea, the Non-Aligned movement. None of these blocks are solid, but on many issues they will reward support so, for example, PNG’s influence on the non-aligned brought support from them on the nuclear resolution.

It also offers opportunities to berate

Vanuatu was, of course, also absent for the vote on the French tests, but Vanuatu’s delegate is so often absent that his exasperated Pacific colleagues are never sure whether it is on principle or just because he doesn’t care

backsliders, like the half dozen former French African colonies who voted with Paris on the test issue. The Forum ambas sadors wrote afterwards to remind them that the Pacific had supported them on an African Nuclear Free Zone. Just because France could no longer test its weapons in the Sahara desert the way it began to 30 years ago, is no reason to allow them to do it now in the Pacific. And they wrote to AOSIS members like Vanuatu who missed their chance express the region’s feeling against the tests.

Similar coalition building by the Pacific helped the Forum to ward off the worst effects of the US budget-cutting rampage. The UN’s Small Island Developing nations unit, the follow-up from the Barbados conference, the Special Committee on Decolonisation, provision of support for climate change monitoring and several other similar proposed axing were averted. One factor, say Pacific diplomats, is that the US has realised just how many votes the small islands had.

What the AOSIS members wanted was so very modest that the US realised that it was pointless alienating them on small cuts if it wanted any support for major

budget reductions on other items.

In the case of the climate change, for example, while the US supported the treaty, the cuts would have meant that for the time being, there would be no one monitoring governments’ compliance.

However, it is not all rosy. The small islands lost out in a squabble between the US and the bigger developing nations about contributions to the UN. With sup port from countries like Britain, there are proposals which would increase the contri butions of countries like China and India, while slightly reducing those of the US, to take into account the shifts in economic growth since decades ago when the when the proportions were calculated. At the moment, the scale ranges from a maxi mum of 25 per cent of the UN’s regular total cost paid by the US (when Congress allows!) and a minimum of 0.1 per cent paid by most small and least developed nations. The new proposal would cut that proportion to 0.01 per cent which would mean that the smaller islands, like Tuvalu, Kiribati and Tonga, for whom the present SUS 100,000 is a major obstacle, would be able to consider joining. The new mini mum would be around SUS 10,000, and present rules allow the Least Developed Countries to claim a return air fare for a delegate.

However, India, China and other coun tries who would have to pay more have in the meantime managed to stall the decision for another year, so it will be little longer before the Forum has a major accession of new blood.

All votes and delegations will be wel come, as demonstrated by the queue that formed on December 4th, when Pacific ambassadors lined up with about 30 dele gations to sign the new Convention on Straddling and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks. It comes into force when over 30 nations have ratified it, as well as signed it, and it is obviously in the interests of all maritime states to ensure that it comes into force as soon as possible.

Its regulation of fishing stocks, although it leaves much to be desired, is a big step forward from the anarchy that pre vailed before, and Fiji’s ambassador, Satya Nandan, who had steered its way through the shoals of years of negotiations as Chairman of the Conference, symbolises its importance for the Pacific. ■