U.S. Interference In Fiji Predicted

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31588, 27 January 1968, Page 14

U.S. Interference In Fiji Predicted

American interference in Fiji’s internal affairs was predicted in a paper presented yesterday to the congress of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science by Mr J. M. Anthony, research scholar in the department of Pacific history at the Australian National University, Canberra.

The recent presence of American Peace Corps' volunteers in Fiji and a noteworthy United States interest and interference in Fiji’s internal affairs had had gone almost completely unnoticed by scholars, said Mr Anthony. “There is every reason to believe that the United States will move into the Pacific with its offer of foreign economic and military assistance,” he said.

“If what has happened in Asia is any guide to the fiit-

ure, foreign aid will easily degenerate into American interference in the host country’s internal affairs. “Whether this is good or bad is one question. What is important for the moment is that the American invasion and the ‘internationalisation’ of the Pacific call for scholarly inquiry.” Mr Anthony said the next five years could bring to the fore as leaders young Fijians who bad returned from abroad and who were dissatisfied with things as they were and saw in politics a chance to do something for themselves and for their people. He said the present Fijian political leadership had been singularly unsuccessful in “delivering the political goods” which ordinary Fijians had long expected. “As long as Ratu Mara and the Fijian establishment remain tied to the apron strings of European economic interests and allow themselves to be dominated by the obsolete economic ideas of their white confreres, the disenchantment of Fijians is likely to increase,” he said.