Ice partners form strategy

Press, 2 August 1985, Page 6

Ice partners form strategy

NZPA-AAP New York The sixteen Antarctic treaty partners met privately in New York yesterday to head off Malaysia’s threat to challenge their authority in the United Nations. Australia’s Ambassador to the U.N., Mr Richard Woolcott, chaired the meeting. The consultative parties who signed the treaty and form the supreme decisionmaking body on Antarctica formed a strategy which they hope will blunt Malaysia’s attack. They were caught by surprise at a recent meeting

of the Organisation for African Unity, which passed a resolution describing Antarctica as the common heritage of mankind. According to diplomatic sources the treaty partners decided yesterday that a similar motion must not be passed at a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Angola in the first week of September. India and Argentina, which are also members of the non-aligned movement, and another non-aligned observer, Brazil, are expected to spearhead the counteroffensive. “The treaty parties were

united in their continuing opposition to institutionalising U.N. involvement in Antarctica,” Mr Woolcott said. Malaysia will revive the question of sovereignty and control over Antarctica when the issue is debated by the U.N. General Assembly in September. Malaysia’s Ambassador to the U.N., Mr Zain Azraai, said that his country would pursue the issue of accountability over Antarctica for as long as was necessary. A number of Third World countries want the U.N. to take control of Antarctica so they can share equally in the potential mineral wealth. They have accused Antarctic treaty partners like Australia, of running an exclusive, neo-colonial club intended to keep Antarctica’s riches for themselves. Australia has argued in the past that Antarctica’s fragile environment is uniquely protected by the 26-year-old treaty under which the two super-Powers conduct scientific research in a nuclear-free, non-mili-tarised region. Diplomatic sources disclosed that the treaty part-

ners agreed unanimously yesterday they should maintain their firm opposition both to the application of the common heritage principle to Antarctica and to giving up control of Antarctica to the U.N. If necessary, treaty members, including the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, are prepared to veto any challenge to their authority. However, they would prefer to resolve the question through diplomatic means rather than face a power struggle in the U.N.’s peacekeeping chamber. The treaty members are determined to resist firmly any efforts they see as undermining the treaty. They will try to convince U.N. members in the next month that the treaty is a highly successful and open international instrument which is too valuable to be risked, and which, in the present international climate, is irreplaceable. They argue that the United States and Soviet Union could not be persuaded to negotiate a similar agreement today.