Forum will survive Libya debate

Press, 13 May 1987, Page 6

Forum will survive Libya debate

By

JAMES SHRIMPTON

of AAP Suva The South Pacific Forum would survive any debate on Libya’s intrusion into the territory, senior diplomatic sources said. The organisation was too valuable to all its 15 members, including Vanuatu, to break up over one issue, they said. The sources were commenting on a recent statement by Vanuatu’s Prime Minister, the Rev.’ Walter Lini, on a possible debate on his country’s links with Libya at the forum meeting in Apia late this month. The forum had no mandate to interfere in its members’ domestic policies, and if this happened “it would signal the end of the forum,” he said.

Diplomatic sources predicted, however, that Vanuatu would never abandon the forum because of implied criticism of the country over its relations with Libya. The forum was too important to Vanuatu in a number of ways, they said. One was that it gave Vanuatu its best platform for the primary aim of its foreign policy: To achieve the independence of its nearest neighbour,. New Caledonia, from France.

Another was the economic benefit of participation in forum initiatives such as the American fishing rights agreement.

• The sources said the Libya issue seemed certain to be raised at the forum in the context of general regional security along with Soviet activity,

New Caledonia, French nuclear tests and other factors.

Criticism of Libyan moves into the South Pacific, especially by Australia and New Zealand, was aimed at Libya, not at Vanuatu.

Forum practice is not to discuss national problems unless they are raised by the country involved.

Other observers forecast that forum speakers would be careful to emphasise these points so Vanuatu would not feel that its domestic affairs were under fire.

They would emphasise each other’s sovereign rights to establish relations and trade with anyone they chose. This it was hoped would defuse Vanuatu’s charges of Australian and New Zealand pressure —~ es-

pecially after the recent meeting between Australian Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr Bill: Hayden, and New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Mr Lange — to “toe the Western line.”

It would also avoid any possibility of a forum split, with Vanuatu supported by its fellowMelanesians, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands.

Australia, New Zealand and Fiji all have diplomatic relations with Libya, as Father Lini has pointed out.

Observers said the forum nations would welcome the Vanuatu leader’s assurances that his country would never allow armed liberation groups or governments-in-exile to be based there.

They said one point that might be overlooked is

that as a Melanesian society, Vanuatu has a tradition of “payback”.

In other words, it could be granting a favour to Libya as a reciprocal gesture in return for its support on international issues such as New Caledonian independence. Melanesians would see such a policy as morally correct.

The reported training of some Vanuatuans in paramilitary and crowdhandling techniques in Libya would not be entirely new, sources said.

In pre-independence days, when Vanuatu was the Anglo-French condominium of New Hebrides, French authorities sent local police to train in North Africa with the French Foreign Legion.