N.Z. hopes for Mafart return

Press, 10 March 1988, Page 6

N.Z. hopes for Mafart return

By

PETER O’HARA

NZPA Paris New Zealand officials held hopes yesterday of a "small” breakthrough in the Alain Mafart affair as talks continued with the French Foreign Ministry.

Sources close to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Marshall, said an announcement might be made at the end of his Paris visit this morning New Zealand time. Discussions which followed Mr Marshall’s meeting with the French Foreign Minister, Mr Jean-Bernard Raimond, might produce a development of “small significance,” they said.

Mr Marshall had what officials described as a blistering exchange with Mr Raimond over New Zealand’s lobby on behalf of tiff indigenous people

of New Caledonia. Mr Marshall, who came to Paris, with the aim of getting a timetable for the return of) the Convicted bomber/ Mafart, to Hao Atoll, declined to comment on his two-day visit to Paris ) until a press conference at the end of the appointments. Officials said talks were delicately! balanced and a lid was kept on the New Zealand view to avoid upsetting the French. In spite of the hopes, Mr Marshall’s party was surprised! by a comment from the | French Foreign Ministry that it was possible Mafart could go back to Hao.

A Ministry spokesman said jit Would depend on Mafairt’s I state of health and the ‘‘prescriptions of the doctors.” It was “premature!’ to discuss a time-, table. < I 4