‘INDEPENDENCE TERMS SOON’

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31378, 25 May 1967, Page 5

‘INDEPENDENCE TERMS SOON’

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) MELBOURNE, May 24. The terms of Nauru’s independence should be decided in the next three weeks, the Nauruan leader, Chief Hammer de RobUrt, said yesterday.

Chief Hammer said he hoped the dispute would be settled before the Nauruan delegation left for the United Nations in the middle of next month to appear before the Trusteeship Council. “There is no disagreement except on the timing of the transfer of control over the phosphate deposits,” he said.

Chief Hammer said that the negotiating Governments— Australia, New Zealand and Britain—were asking . for a

five-year transition period. “But we want a three-year period,” he said. He denied that negotiations with representatives of the three countries had broken down recently in Canberra. “They have merely been suspended while proposals were referred back to the Governments concerned,” he said.

Chief Hammer said he was confident the three countries would come back with a reply before the Nauruan delegation left for the United Nations. “Nauru is the number one item on the trusteeship council’s agenda,” he said. “We are not going there to comP in but we have a duty to speak—just as any other Government has.”

He said’ Nauru would go ahead with its planned independence celebration on January 31 next year—even though the full transition into independence would almost certainly take longer.