Meetings on Antarctic to continue

Press, 1 December 1987, Page 2

Meetings on Antarctic to continue

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

To make progress towards a minerals regime for Antarctica that can be signed at the formal meeting scheduled for next May, an informal meeting will be held in Wellington over late January next year. This follows a two-week meeting in Auckland earlier this month. At the end of the Montevideo, meeting of the Antarctic Treaty countries. laSl May, the Deputy -secretary: w Foreigh Affairs, Mr Chris Beeby, was given authority to call interim meetings bjefore the final meeting in Wellington next May. There are a number of legal, diplomatic and environmental issues to be resolved before a minerals regime can come into force. '.Mr Beeby called an “in cdhimittee”: meeting in Auckland of the 15 consultative parties to the Treaty. Next January’s Wellington meeting will be held at the Michael Fowler Centre from January 18 to 29 and Mr Beeby said

invitations had been sent to all 37 parties to the Antarctic Treaty. He will also send out a draft document, the fifth draft so far, of a minerals regime that embodies the progress made at Auckland. He said, as examples of the topics still needing further work, that the January meeting would look at the way in which mining decisions should be made, methods of inspection, how monitoring could be done, who was liable for what. and the limits of liability, and compliance with the regime. After the Auckland meeting this month and with the January meeting in prospect, a convention on a minerals regime next May was now in sight, Mr Beeby said. The convenor of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, Ms Cath Wallace, said a lot of loose ends had been tied up at the Auckland meeting. The big stumbling block left was the issue of liability for damage, she said.