Fishing Pacts Expand Soviets’ S. Pacific Role

The Soviet Union is seeking to expand its military capabilities in the South Pacific through fishing agreements with small but strategically situated island republics, a U.S. admiral warned a House panel Wednesday.

Rear Adm. Edward B. Baker Jr., director of the East Asia and Pacific region for the Pentagon, said that Moscow has concluded a fishing agreement with Kiribati and is negotiating with Vanuatu on a similar pact. He told the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Pacific that this could give the Soviets access to “strategic geography,” permitting surveillance of U.S. missile testing and a “Star Wars” research center in Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands.

“The Soviets are coming on very, very strong,” Baker said, citing a doubling of time spent by Soviet ships in the region from 1980 to 1981, with annual increases since then.

Baker said that an adversary with land-base rights in Kiribati could pose a strategic threat to Hawaii by stationing a communications satellite that could overlook Hawaii, Kwajalein and even the West Coast of the United States.

It is possible to place such a satellite without a land base, Baker said, but land-based communications offer cost and technological advantages over ships. Also, he said, the same advantages apply to the Soviets’ monitoring of their own missile tests in the South Pacific and possible deep-sea mining in the Pacific for which Moscow has established claims.

State Department officials and U.S. fishing industry spokesmen said that the Soviets agreed to give Kiribati $1.7 million a year for fishing rights--an amount that they said is a gross overpayment.

“No one believes that the Soviet Union has paid Kiribati $1.7 million strictly for fishing rights,” James P. Walsh, counsel for the American Tunaboat Assn., declared. “It would be commercial suicide for our vessels to buy licenses at the rate paid by the Soviet Union.”

Under a regional fishing treaty being negotiated between the United States and the island nations, the U.S. tuna industry would pay $1.5 million for fishing rights in the territory of eight Pacific states, while the federal government would provide an additional $6 million a year in the form of aid.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State James Lilley said that the United States has not opposed Soviet ties with the islanders but that “we have pointed out their track record,” citing violations of a Soviet agreement with the West African nation of Sierra Leone.

MP, DON CLEMENT / Los Angeles Times