Timing the key in fish negotiations with Japan

Press, 24 August 1977, Page 10

Timing the key in fish negotiations with Japan

By

STUART McMILLAN

These are early days in the negotiations between Japan and New Zealand over the granting of fishing rights in return for steadier access to the Japanese market for agricultural products. The Minister of Fisheries (Mr Bolger) is obviously not going to leave Japan with a deal sewn up. That is hardly surprising because the Japanese Prime Minister (Mr Fukuda) appeared to grasp what it was New Zealand wanted only at the beginning of this month.

If there is going to be a deal the co-ordinating of the timing schedules may be the key element. New Zealand is likely to declare a 200-mile fishing zone later this year, possibly within a few weeks, and will have to grant access to foreign fishermen for some of the catch it cannot take itself. So the time schedule for New Zealand is immediate.

Japan, on the other hand, wants to conclude an agreement with New Zealand but is faced with what amounts to an ultimatum that there will be no negotiations without Japanese concessions on access for agricultural produce. Yet it has several major problems over agriculture which it has to overcome and which would prove to be political suicide should they be acted on precipitously. The first of these is the rural support given to the present Government by the Liberal Democratic Party. The support is both in voting numbers and, for the Lower House, the voting which is weighted in favour of the rural voter. In simple electoral arithmetic, too, there are more farmers than there are fishermen. But what New Zealand is seeking is also in direct conflict with at least two major policies of Japan; self-sufficiency in food, and farmers being encouraged to grow beef instead of rice.

As Professor K. Hemmi, professor of agricultural economics at Tokyo University, said in Christchurch last week, the Japanese Government cannot be expected to change its policies quickly and so lose face. If the Japanese Government thought it worth while to accommodate New Zealand’s demands, how long would it take to bring about a change of thinking in Japan? The least that one can say is that it must take months, not the weeks which New Zealand’s timetable requires. The problem is not insuperable. The licences to fish in New Zealand’s 200mile zone are likely to be issued annually, so that even if Japan were excluded for one year, pro-

vided that a deal was completed, licences could be issued later. This might present a problem with another country which was admitted for a year and was then to be excluded. Or Japan could be granted a licence for the one year, to be renewed on condition that it concluded a satisfactory deal for the next season. That, too, would have its problems. A precedent would have been set and if a dispute had to be taken to the International Court of Justice then a precedent of having been granted a licence might weigh in Japan’s favour. But both Japan and New Zealand employ diplomats to avoid complete deadlocks — their ingenuity may be a little strained, however, before these negotiations are complete. Impatience may be a luxury New Zealand cannot afford over the negotiations. Yet it is likely to come from several sources. The first is political. It is always a temptation for ministers to attempt to conclude a deal during a visit for the prestige attached which might help the minister concerned electorally or within his own party. The corollary of not being able to conclude a deal immediately is to reject the possibility altogether. A second source of impatience is domestic. Public impatience with long-

drawn out negotiations may tempt politicians to try to make the going faster than is possible. Or interest groups may push the Government to conclude an agreement that suits them in haste. Fishermen and farmers in New Zealand have a personal interest in the outcome of the negotiations. A third source will be pressure from Japan for New Zealand to decide quickly. Already it is apparent that this will take the form of keeping the questions of access to the Japanese market and access to the fishing grounds separate. The final source of pressure to settle quickly will come from other nations. Eight nations apart from Japan want access to the 200-mile fishing zone. They are the Soviet Union, Poland, Yugoslavia, Britain, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States, and Spain. Of these the Government is believed to be most favourably inclined towards the Soviet Union, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

While Mr Bolger was in the Soviet Union, it made another purchase of New Zealand meat, to the value of $25 million, bringing the total purchases of meat this year to more than $lOO million. It would be hard to mistake the significance of the timing of the new purchase.

One of the worst things that could happen for New

Zealand's future trade relations is for impatience to cause the abandonment of the attempt to obtain a “trade off.”

New New Zealand has to retain its credibility in trade deals. Mr Muldoon, Mr Bolger, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs (Mr Taiboys) are all on record as seeking a deal over fishing access and access to the Japanese markets.

The Prime Minister, in particular, has practically painted New Zealand into a comer over the issue and the door of access to Japan has to open if New Zealand is not going to leave its footprints for all to see — and take advantage of.

Japan wants the fishing badly partly because of its exclusion from other fishing grounds because of the declaration of 200-mile zones. What New Zealand does may also be the key to how a number of other Pacific countries treat Japan, which is still bruised from its negotiations with the Soviet Union which is claiming the islands of Shikutan, Habomai, Kunashiri, and Etorofu, off Hokkaido.

In spite of the refusals so far coming from Japan, there is no reason to believe that Japan does not still retain an interest in the fishing grounds. The opening bids have been made; the stakes are still high enough for no-one to have lost interest in the game. The play is partly for time.