Fishing offer to Kiribati

Press, 27 February 1986, Page 12

Fishing offer to Kiribati

From ‘The Economist/ London

Even quite knowledgeable geopoliticians reached for their atlases last year when Kiribati announced that it was allowing Russian boats to fish in its waters. Ah, yes. Kiribati (pronounced Kiribass), formerly the Britishowned Gilbert Islands, miles from anywhere in the South Pacific, independent since 1979, economy feeble since the phosphate mines ran out several years ago. It was because Kiribati was notably hard up that it made a deal with the Russians which allows them to fish, mainly for tuna, within the tiny State’s 200mile fisheries zone. The Russians are paying $1.7 million a year for the fishing rights. * J

That is not a lot in the budget of most countries, but a fortune for Kiribati. President leremia Tabai said, believably, that the deal was purely a commercial one, and that Russian boats would not be allowed to set up a base ashore in Kiribati. All the same, the deal worried both the United States and Australia. Both will be relieved by the news that an American company, the Marco Corporation of Seattle, is interested in a joint fishing project with Kiribati. Marco, which builds and equips fishing boats, said on February 18 that it is about to study the feasibility of doing business with Kiribati. Kiribati and other Pacific island States have long had a

grievance against American tuna boats. The islanders say that the Americans poach in their waters. Had the Americans, bothered to obtain licences to fish in Kiribati’s zone, as Japanese, Taiwanese and South Koreans have done, the Russians might have been turned away (as they were by the Solomons and Tuvalu).

Now, having landed the Russian deal, Kiribati means to hold on to it President Tabai says that if the United States believes that a Marco project will get the Russians out of Kiribati waters, the Americans will have to think again.

Copyright — The Economist.