N.Z. to increase Island aid

Press, 3 August 1985, Page 8

N.Z. to increase Island aid

By PATRICIA HERBERT, who will attend the South Pacific Forum in Rarotonga next week for “The Press.”

The Prime Minister, Mr Lange, will announce a $250,000 increase in New Zealand funding for small island development at the South Pacific Forum in Rarotonga next week. The increase will cement the principle established last year when the Lange Government increased its aid to both Tuvalu and Kiribati 73 per cent. This was in response to a plea from Kiribati at the Tuvalu Forum for recognition of the special problems faced by the smaller island nations — those which did not have traditional benefactors and which did not meet the criteria of landing agencies such as the;Asian Development Bank. w

Mr Lange championed Kiribati’s cause last year and will pursue it this year when the subject of aid again comes up for discussion. The forum will hear a report from a specially appointed committee of officials comprising representatives of New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Tuvalu, and Western Samoa. Mr Lange said before leaving for Rarotonga that he hoped the report would be adopted.

He said it did not contain any radically new suggestions. Rather it attempted to provide guidelines for regional institutions such as S.P.E.C. (South Pacific Bureau for Economic Cooperation) and the Forum Fisheries Agency (F.F.A.). The F.F.A. will also re-

port to the forum on talks it is having with the United States over the intrusion of American tunamen into exclusive economic zones. The United States refuses to recognise territorial rights over tuna on the ground that it is a highly migratory species. The issue was raised at last year’s Forum by the Solomon Islands which had seized the American purseseiner Jeanette Diane for fishing illegally in its The United States Government had retaliated by putting a ban on seafood imports from the Solomons, a move Mr Lange described at the time as unacceptable and which the Forum later registered as a matter of grave concern. The’ United States embargo was imposed under

the Magnusson Act which provides that mandatory reprisals be taken against any country that arrests an American fishing boat and the F.F.A. is now trying to produce a treaty which will override these provisions. The negotiations have been through four rounds with a fifth scheduled for Apia next month. Countries involved on the F.F.A. side are Australia, the Cook Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palu, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, and Western Samoa. Commentators consider the chances of successfully negotiating an agreement may have improved because the United States Government is concerned thAt the

ill-feeling provoked by the cavalier attitude of the tunamen is creating a climate sympathetic to Soviet advances in the South Pacific.

The Russians have approached the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, and Kiribati for fishing deals this year. The Solomon Islands and Tuvalu turned them down but Kiribati accepted although it denied shore rights.

Even so, it is expected that Kiribati will have some explaining to do at the Forum.

Mr Lange’s reaction was ambivalent. He refused to criticise Kiribati or to recognise any threat to regional security but publicly applauded the Solomons and Tuvalu for the stance they had taken.