France’s Pacific role challenged

Press, 11 July 1979, Page 3

France’s Pacific role challenged

NZPA Honiara The Foreign Minister of Papua New Guinea, Mr Ebia Olewale) will raise the question of independence for French territories in the South Pacific at the United Nations General Assembly in October. Mr Olewale said yesterday at the final session of the South Pacific Forum in Honiara that he would ask for the question to be referred to the United Nations “Committee of 24” on decolonisation, a move expected to be stronglyopposed by France. The French territories were taken off the decolonisation committee’s list at France’s request in 1947. The French regard New Caledonia and French Polynesia as part of France and not as colonial territories. Mr Olewale said he would discuss the issue with other forum countries in the United Nations before he goes to New York in October. Mr Olewale said he hoped to visit Wellington if he had! time before the General Assembly. He also wants to go to Paris, Canberra, Suva, and Apia. Mr Olewale will attend the South Pacific Conference in Papeete early in October, and also plans to visit Noumea. In both New Caledonia and Tahiti he wants to talk to French Government officials and representatives of political parties. “We want to hear both sides of the storv, from the Government arid from the people themselves,” he said. The forum leaders spent about three hours debating what the forum should do or say about the French territories. The Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) and the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia (Mr Anthonv) both told other forum leaders that Papua New Guinea’s action could be

seen as an interference in the internal affairs of France. Australia also argued that, at this stage, it was impossible to discern a clear majority wish for independence in either of the French territories. Observers said that this last point struck at the heart of the issue. Under the voting system, French soldiers, gendarmes, and other expatriates stationed in the Pacific can vote with islanders in any elections affecting independence. The French Secretary of State for Overseas Territories (Mr Oliver Stirn). who did much of the French Government’s pre-forum lobbying, has said that France would give the territories independence overnight, if this was the wish of the majority. New Caledonian independence seekers who came to Honiara this week to lobby' for their cause, contended it was possible to swamp ihe islands with French citizens to ensure that independence never came. They said that persons from electorates in which islanders were predominate, overwhelmingly supported the independence movement. Mr Olewale, a leader of his country’s independence movement and described by' Mr Muldoon as a “hardliner” on the independence question, said that Papua New Guinea planned to work through its diplomatic posts to find out what the situation was in French and United States territories in the Pacific. Mr Muldoon told the forum that not enough was known about the situation in the French territories. The forum declined to give observer status to the Federated States of Micronesia (United States territory), saying that insuff>m>mt information was available. Mr Olewale said later that

he thought the final watereddown resolution, which simply reaffirmed the forum’s belief in the principles of self-determination and independence, was a “move in the right direction.’’

“I am personally satisfied we have reached a consensus but this is only a beginning,” he said.

Replying to a suggestion that New Zealand and Australia had opposed his original resolution because they were concerned about their relations with the European Economic Community, Mr Olewale said: “I had that feeling.” The meeting of the forum ended yesterday with the signing of the convention formally establishing the South Pacific Forum Fisheries Agency based at Honiara.

The agency is designed to promote the rational exploitation of all living marine resources in the region for the benefit of forum member countries.

The final forum communique said members also recognised the need to consider a more broadly based fisheries organisation. This would include countries such as the United States, France, and Great Britain which have an interest in the area. But some forum members, particularly Fiji, are adamant that, before it joined, the United States must recognise the island states’ exclusive jurisdiction over tuna in their 200-mile zones.

Forum leaders got through most of their work on Monday and had a relaxed day yesterday. Mr Muldoon, dressed in a blue-and-white islands shirt with a string of Solomons shell money beads round his neck, had a picnic lunch on the beach with Mr Anthony and the Premier of the Cook Islands (Dr Davis).

Mr Muldoon will fly to Tarawa today for the Kiribati independence celebrations.