ISLAND TERRITORIES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27389, 15 May 1950, Page 4

ISLAND TERRITORIES

Tour Of Inspection TRUSTEESHIP COUNCIL MISSION ’• Special Correspondent WELLINGTON, May 14. The United Nations mission now in the Pacific studying the political economic and social progress and problems of the peoples of the four Island territories, will come to Wellington next month to discuss with the Government New Zealand’s administration of Western Samoa. A similar but special mission which went to Samoa in response to the demand of I the chiefs and people for self-govern-ment was here in 1947. The present team is carrying out the first regular inspection of all four of the Pacific territories under United Nations trusteeship the Central Pacific Islands formerly under mandate to Japan was now administered by the United States, the phosphate island of Nauru, under the joint , care of Australia, New Zealand and Britain, and New Guinea, under Australian administration, and Western Samoa. The mission is headed by the British former colonial administrator, Sir Alan Burns, recently Governor of the Gold Coast, and with him are three members nominated respectively by the Philippines, French and Chinese Nationalist Governments. The mission is thus an even balance of representatives of colonial Powers and those of non-colonial Powers, reflecting the similarly balanced composition of the United Nations Trusteeship Council, by which the mission has been sent out and to which it will report. The mission’s secretariat is headed by a Frenchman. M. Jean de la Roche, and includes the New Zealander, Mr lan Berendsen, son of the New Zealand Ambassador to the United States, Sir Carl Berendsen. The staff also includes an Australian and an American. ,