Tuna treaty talks hit fee snag

Press, 22 July 1986, Page 4

Tuna treaty talks hit fee snag

Phlllip Melchior

By Pl

of NZPA-Reuter

Rarotonga

Talks in the Cook Islands on a tuna fishing treaty between the United States and South Pacific island nations have failed, officials said yesterday. A communique issued at the end of the ninth round of talks in Rarotonga said “frank discussions” were held on the fee demanded by the islands from the American tuna boats who fish their waters. Officials told Reuters the fee was the main sticking point in the sixday. talks with'the islands insisting on much more than the SUSIO million ($18.7 million) Washington had offered for Paci-fic-wide rights.

“We continue to make progress on the substantive issues,” the American delegation leader, Mr Ed

Wolfe, told Reuters. Mr Wolfe, Assistant Secretary of State for Ocean and Fisheries Affairs, said all delegates would go back to their Governments before the next round, probably in September. After predicting an early agreement when the talks began, Mr Wolfe said, “I continue to be cautiously optimistic. Both sides would hope that we can wrap this up at the next meeting.” . The dispute involves the region’s 13 independent nations grouped under the South Pacific Forum Fisheries Agency including New Zealand and Australia.

Many island leaders think it is the most important issue facing the Pacific.

Washington has traditionally insisted the

islands have no exclusive claim to the migratory tuna just because they are in their waters at some point i' It regards the big, silver fish as an international property. The islands however, with vast offshore exclusive economic zones (E.E.Z.) but tiny, scattered land masses, have called the United States tuna fishermen pirates and buccaneers.

They argue that fishing is their only economic resource in some cases.

Kiribati, formerly the British colony of the! Gilbert Islands, signed an agreement last year with the Soviet Union to allow tuna fishing in its three million square mile E.E.Z. and Vanuatu and Fiji have begun talks with Moscow on similar deals. •

Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, whose -tongdistance fleets also fish the South Pacific, have also reached bilateral agreements with the islands.