PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT

Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center
With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies/University of Hawai‘i

MELBOURNE, Australia (Radio Australia, August 11) - New Zealand’s Prime Minister Helen Clark has predicted that the people of the remote Pacific territory of Tokelau will vote for greater independence when the issue eventually goes to a referendum.

Miss Clark has just made a two-day visit to the islands -- the first by a New Zealand prime minister in 20 years.

Officials are moving to finalize a draft treaty on self-government for the territory.

And the New Zealand leader says this will open the way for a referendum on free association with New Zealand - a status similar to the Cook Islands and Niue.

"It’s been a slow and gradual process: it's been one that the UN Committee has kept itself fully abreast of, and properly urged movement on, and Tokelau has now got to the point where it wants to actually exercise that right of self-determination, and from what I saw I would expect that the Tokelauan people probably will vote for that option of self-government in free association with New Zealand - but nothing about this has been hasty."

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