Friendship, forgiveness

and fast action

By Michael Field

Great moments in history can have modest beginnings and for Madame Suzanne Tee-vwissen, settling her children into a new Paris high school, it was marked with her pager going off, summoning her translator’s skills urgently.

What happened next was a piece of diplomatic history as top-ranked French European Affairs Minister Michel Bamier, with diplomats, officials and Teevwissen in tow, boarded a French Air Force Falcon jet and raced across the globe. The seductive Pacific, after a year of spuming the republic because of its unpleasant personal habits at Mururoa, had invited France back into bed to make dialogue and peace.

He was heading back to the South Pacific Forum dialogue session delight ed, as Bamier put it, because President Jacques Chirac had “an attachment... for the men and women of the Pacific, an area he loved”.

Strange kind of love to blow it up, but Bamier said he was turning a new page.

The rushed trip, at the personal insistence of Chirac, was a grand gesture of affec tion and love.

Sitting in the new Outrigger Hotel in Majuro, it was plain the Pacific was back in love with the French too, or perhaps their francs...

Bamier had a lot more going for him

than hapless French Cooperation

Minister Jacques Godfrain, who attended the 1995 post-Forum dialogue in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea and saw his country tossed out. With nuclear bombs actually going off around that Forum, his was an impossible task and it was intrigu ing that during the 1996 Marshall’s

Forum he was in Mozambique, beyond the best pager’s range.

In Majuro with Bamier was French Polynesian President Gaston Flosse accompanied by wife Tonita. Before France was allowed back into the dia logue, Flosse despatched an aide and a cabinet minister to Majuro, only to be told by Marshalls Foreign Minister Phillip Muller to go home.

This prompted the influential daily Le Monde to comment that Flosse was involved in wild diplomacy, claiming support from long-time friend Chirac

while doing things professional French

diplomats would spurn.

“This raises the question again - if France is pursuing a single aim in the South Pacific why is it using dual diplo macy?” correspondent Florence de Changy wrote. Bamier said the latest Flosse incident was a misunderstanding and was built on good intentions. It was

best forgotten.

Flosse was to suffer though. At a Press conference following this year’s dialogue

the existence of a special responsibility toward the Marshallese who had been adversely affected as a result of nuclear tests conducted during the period of the United States trusteeship. • Forum leaders expressed satisfaction at the permanent cessation of French nuclear testing in the South Pacific and the signature and ratification by Vanuatu of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty. • Forum leaders welcomed the completion of the report on the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. • The Forum noted France's invitation to the International Atomic Energy Agency (lAEA) to conduct a radiological study of French nuclear testing sites in the Pacific and expressed its appreciation for the co-operation given so far to the project by the French authorities, • Leaders gave full support to the adoption of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by the current session of fhe UN General Assembly and called on all other members of the international community to do likewise. • The Forum expressed concern over the continuing threats to the region from criminal activity and reiterated its commitment to the Flonlara Declaration on Law Enforcement Co-operation. • The Forum recognised the seriousness of any increased movement of weapons through the region. The Regional Security Committee has been directed to study how Forum members could work together to control this. • The Forum appreciated Malaysia's interest in the development of the region and would welcome it as a post-Forum dialogue partner. • The Forum agreed on the lifting of the suspension of France as a dialogue partner. • The Forum reaffirmed its support for continuing contact with New Caledonia as a constructive contribution towards the Matignon process. It expressed its disappointment at France's decision not to welcome Nauru's participation in the Forum s ministerial visit to New Caledonia this year. • The Forum reaffirmed its unanimous support for Australia's and Japan's candidature for the UN Security Council for the two-year term 1997-98. • The Forum has decided to hold the 28th South Pacific Forum in the Cook Islands next year.

Gaston Flosse... “wild diplomacy”

session, Flosse was launching into a dis sertation on the beauties and safety of nuclear testing when, somewhat obvious ly with his downtumed palm, Bamier first indicated to Teevwissen to stop translating his French and then to Flosse to stop talk ing altogether. Within the French camp there is a degree of puzzlement over the Pacific attitude to the nuclear tests - and downright anger over Australia and New Zealand.

More than once it was pointed out that France was being made to produce all kinds of guarantees over the long-term safety and rehabilitation of Mururoa.

“But look at Nauru, look what Australia did there” one senior official said. One did not even have to go to Nauru, this year’s Forum host, the Marshall Islands, was enough alone.

Squalid beyond belief, now Majuro wants to turn itself into a nuclear waste dump, while still berating the French.

Bamier used to be an environment minister, however, and he knew his stuff and, according to Muller, in the dialogue session the Forum got the guarantees they wanted. “We are extremely satisfied with

the response given by France, the Forum got the assurances it needed,” Muller said.

Just over 24 hours after speeding in, Bamier was aboard his Falcon and head ing back to Paris.

The South Pacific has good reason to be sceptical of the French; a long history of nuclear testing is reason alone.

But if the reaction aboard the Falcon between Majuro and Hawaii was anything to go by, France had been desperately unhappy with what had happened over the last year and to have lost the love of the Pacific.

Aboard the plane, Bamier was a man delighted, highly satisfied with the pay off for an astonishing effort to kiss and make up. And clearly a man destined for greater things in the French political establishment, he left an impression of sincerity and interest.

So why then was it so necessary to kick the Pacific in the teeth in the first place by doing those last six nuclear tests?

In light of the Majuro experience they looked even more unnecessary, even more macho than ever before... ■