American delegation makes quick visit

Press, 18 February 1989, Page 8

American delegation makes quick visit

By

DEBORAH MCPHERSON

The importance of the Pacific region to the United States was signalled by the visit of an influential congressional delegation to Christchurch yesterday. Sixteen members of the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee zipped through Christchurch and the Banks Peninsula as part of an eleven-day tour of the Pacific. The Interior Department has combined functions similar to New Zealand’s ministries of the Environment, Conservation, Fisheries, Forestry, D.S.I.R. and Maori Affairs. The orientation tour of the Pacific was a means of “sensitising” members of the committee, many of whom were unfamiliar with Pacific-Asia issues, said the Congressman for American Samoa, Mr Eni Faleonavaega, Mr Faleonavaega is also a member of the Foreign Affairs committee of the United

States of Representatives. The visit was important because many of the islands being visited were of military strategic interest. If members of congress were familiar with the area, it could also help get “Washington’s attention” for issues of interest to the region, he said.

The committee will also be visiting the islands in the Federated States of Micronesia such as the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, the Islands of Palau and American Samoa. The United States has been considering those islands as possible military base sites should the Philippines no longer be available to them.

The islands are of strategic interest to the United States, and are administered by the United States under a trusteeship agreement through the United Nations. They have a similar compact of free

association to New Zealand’s relationship to the Cook Islands. During the two-day New Zealand visit, the delegation had also been briefed on activities relating to the role of the United States and New Zealand in the exploration of Antarctica, management of national parks, and New Zealand’s relationship’s with the Pacific Islands and Maori people, as well as historic preservation efforts. The delegation was led by the chairman, congressman Morris Udall, a former Presidential candidate, and also included the Secretary of the Interior, Mr Manuel Lujan. It was also bipartisan in nature, including six Republicans and six Democrats. Mr Udall said the size of the delegation and the presence of the secretary, Mr Lujan, underscored the importance of the insular Pacific areas to the United States.