Vanuatu jibs at signing treaty

Press, 9 August 1985, Page 1

Vanuatu jibs at signing treaty

By

PATRICIA HERBERT

in Rarotonga

Vanuatu yesterday broke ranks and declared that it could not sign the nuclearfree zone treaty adopted by the South Pacific Forum. The Vanuatuan Prime Minister, the Rev. Walter Lini, made the announcement at a morning press session.

The timing was significant. He made it after the treaty’s two main advocates—the Australian Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, and the New Zealand Prime Minister, Mr Lange—had left Rarotonga.

It fell to the Minister of

Transport, Mr Prebble, there for the Pacific Island Conference, to try to talk Vanuatu round. Mr Prebble said he had discussed the matter with Father Lini, had commended his desire for a stronger stand, but had told him that the treaty was only a first step and that Vanuatu should sign it then lobby to have it improved. “It seems to me that it is better to get widespread agreement and then possibly take further steps later rather than say unless we get everything immediately we will have nothing,” Mr Prebble said.

He thought it possible

that Vanuatu would come round to this view and “in the end sign.” That may be, but Father Lini was a little bitter yesterday at the way the matter had been handled and hinted that Australia and New Zealand had bulldozed the forum.

He said the Vanuatu delegation recognised the importance of consensus and was sorry to see it used by “some members” only to get what they wanted—a reference to the forum tradition of making decisions on a distillation of opinion rather than voting. Father Lini said the treaty was impractical, that

it would be ineffective, that it did not reflect the strength of public feeling on the issue, and that it would be wrong of Vanuatu to sign it.

Instead, Vanuatu would draw up a new draft that imposed a comprehensive nuclear ban in the Pacific for presentation next year. Father Lini hoped that by then the nations which had signed it would recognise that the treaty was a failure. In the intervening 12 months he said he could not sign. .

This provoked a stir because it directly contradicted assertions made by

Mr Lange the day before in his capacity as forum spokesman. Mr Lange had said there was “unaniminity” on the treaty and that the five countries that had yet to sign would probably sign within two months.

He gave the impression that the only reason they had not signed was that they had first “to go through certain constitutional procedures at home.”

When this was put to Father Lini yesterday he said he had told the Forum that it would be impossible for Vanuatu to sign the document in its present form.

Father Lini’s support was always problematic because Vanuatu’s nuclear policy is at least as hard as New Zealand’s and the treaty compromises to achieve a broad acceptability. It gives each country the right to determine its own ports policy and allows the transit of nuclear weaponry through the region.

This apparently makes it unacceptable to Vanuatu which wants a complete ban, stronger prohibitions on the dumping of radioactive waste, and the extension of the zone to take in the whole of the Pacific, not just the south.