U.S., Australia Wary of Soviets’ S. Pacific Role

The Soviet Union is taking advantage of a complex of economic, colonial and nuclear issues, including the tendency of U.S. tuna fishermen to thumb their noses at local peoples, to penetrate deeper than ever before into an area of the globe that the United States has long thought of as its own: the South Pacific.

Last year, for example, the Soviets bought licenses to fish off Kiribati, the former Gilbert Islands, whose capital, Tarawa, was captured by U.S. Marines in one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. And just last month the Soviets signed an agreement with the island nation of Vanuatu that permits port calls as well as fishing.

Gorbachev Reminder

“The Soviet Union is also an Asian and Pacific country,” Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev reminded the world last July in a major speech at Vladivostok. And the Soviets’ toehold in the warm sands of the South Pacific is sure to grow stronger as Moscow and Washington intensify their competition for influence in the region.

“It will start as a fish-processing facility,” former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser predicted several years ago. “But that will have some refueling facilities, which will require repair facilities and, in turn, an airfield. Then it is a base.” It was “an absolute certainty,” he added, that Soviet military operations would follow.

U.S. Shares Concern

Although Australia has expressed deeper anxiety about developments in the region, the United States does share “the concern of other Pacific island states about an increased Soviet presence in the region,” a State Department official said last week. “We have called the Vanuatu government’s attention to the fact that Soviet fishing operations are often a cover for other activities.”

A former Administration official was more alarmist. Among the countless islands of the Pacific could be “another Grenada,” he said, raising the specter that one day the United States might have to intervene to oust a pro-Soviet government.

Vanuatu’s prime minister, an Anglican priest named Walter Lini, has promised that his nation of about 135,000 people will not become another Grenada. But it recently recognized Libya and has diplomatic ties with Cuba and the Soviet Union. Closely allied with separatists in the nearby French colony of New Caledonia, Lini has also flirted with recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Factors in Soviet Presence

Three factors have contributed to the recent redrawing of the Pacific’s political map:

-- The U.S. defeat in Vietnam and the replacement of American maritime power by the Soviets on the Vietnamese coast, particularly at U.S.-built facilities at Cam Ranh Bay and Da Nang. These are potent counterweights to American bases at Subic Bay and Clark Air Base in the restive Philippines.

-- The growth in size and quality of the Soviet fleet in the Pacific. With about 300 surface combat vessels and 130 submarines, it is nearly twice as big as the U.S. Pacific Fleet, although the U.S. ships are generally bigger and better equipped, and are manned by sailors with superior training.

-- The increasing economic importance of Soviet Asia in Kremlin plans. Most of the Soviet land mass lies in Siberia and the Far East, and its rich natural resources, when developed, will be exported at least in part around the Pacific Rim.

Gorbachev made special mention in Vladivostok of the “resources of the oceans. For many reasons, (Soviet) fisheries will be shifted increasingly to the Far East. Large funds have been invested in the creation of a large-capacity fishing fleet in the area.”

Easing the way for Soviet activity in the South Pacific are myriad problems that bedevil the region and breed ferment. During a visit last month to Washington, Vanuatu’s foreign minister, Sela Molisa, cited three: residual colonialism, nuclear testing and chronic economic troubles.

New Caledonia Issue

The colonial issue centers on New Caledonia.

“French reluctance to give independence to New Caledonia is the greatest potential threat to regional stability in the short term,” an Australian diplomat said recently. Australia, which supports the independence movement, fears that New Caledonia will become a Pacific Algeria, from which the French will withdraw only after bloody warfare that brings radicals to power.

Blood has already been shed on New Caledonia. In a dispute with clear racial overtones, the pro-independence Melanesians, called Kanaks, clashed in 1984 with police and French settlers who enjoy considerable support in France.

The Kanaks, accounting for 43% of New Caledonia’s 330,000 residents, have become more militant since then and have attracted outside help. There is evidence, for example, that Libyan strongman Moammar Kadafi has provided training for Kanak militants in Libya, according to Australians who closely monitor the situation.

French Nuclear Tests

France is also responsible for the high anti-nuclear fever that runs through the region. Since losing Algeria, the French have conducted 84 underground nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia, including eight last year after the South Pacific Forum, a loose grouping of 13 nations, concluded a treaty to make the region a nuclear-free zone.

Outside powers were invited to subscribe to the treaty’s terms, but the United States and France declined. The Reagan Administration argued that the South Pacific pact would set a precedent for similar nuclear-free zones in militarily important regions and spread the “nuclear allergy” into the Philippines and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

The Soviet Union, meanwhile, signed the pact, and Rep. Stephen J. Solarz (D-N.Y.), chairman of a House subcommittee on Pacific affairs, said Moscow won a “serious propaganda bonanza.”

Nettlesome as the colonial and nuclear issues may be, the South Pacific’s basic problem is economic. The islands have little to export from the land except crops like copra--dried coconut meat--for which prices are now at record lows.

Thus the region’s island nations are under considerable pressure to make money from their maritime resources. And the antics of U.S. tuna fishermen, who according to virtually all specialists have run roughshod through the region with the support of U.S. law, have paved the way for the Soviet fishing arrangements.

U.S. Protects Tuna Boats

In 1976, Congress enacted a law intended to protect U.S. tuna boats from seizure by South American nations, which had imposed 200-mile economic exclusion zones in contiguous oceans and demanded licenses for fishing there. Passed under lobbying pressure of the U.S. Tunaboat Assn., the law provides that the U.S. government will “buy back” any tuna purser--fishing boat--taken by a foreign country, paying the fines and even compensating the owner for “down time” costs of the idled boat.

When tuna became scarce off South America, U.S. tuna boats, many of them from San Diego, turned to the South Pacific, where three were soon seized by island nations. The cost of their recovery to U.S. taxpayers was about $550,000 each, according to U.S. officials, although Australians say that the final bill was more like $1 million each.

The price in soured relations with the once-friendly islanders was far greater, however.

“Is there nothing that the U.S. government can do to bring its tuna cowboys to heel?” the Fiji-based Islands Business asked in an editorial. Australians called the U.S. Tunaboat Assn. a Mafia.

The Soviet Union promptly offered fishing deals to virtually all the island nations. Most of them declined, under pressure from Australia.

But last year, Kiribati signed a $1.7-million agreement that licensed a Soviet mother ship and up to 11 smaller vessels to fish its 2 million square miles of equatorial waters for one year. Soviet efforts to win rights to shore visits were refused.

The price was high--10% of the Kiribati government’s annual budget--but the Soviets were interested in more than the fish. All indications are that their catch did not justify the price, and this year the Soviets offered only $1.3 million to renew the agreement. Kiribati rejected it.

Port Calls Allowed

But the Soviets had already lined up Vanuatu, and its $1.5-million fee will provide the government with 15% of its revenue. The tuna fishing off Vanuatu is poorer than at Kiribati, but port calls are permitted for the eight ships.

The security risks of the Soviet fishing boat presence are relatively small. Its trawlers can carry intelligence-collecting equipment, including cameras and electronic eavesdropping equipment, but such vessels have been almost permanently anchored off the U.S. test range at Kwajalein for years, U.S. officials say.

More dangerous, according to Australian and U.S. officials, is the prospect that Soviet fishermen, once ashore, may infiltrate embryonic trade union movements.

“We told the Vanuatuans that they would need considerable resources to watch the Soviets once they land,” an Australian diplomat said, “and that they didn’t have the bureaucratic and technical capabilities. Their response was that we were questioning their right as an independent nation to enter into a trade agreement, and that they didn’t need a counterintelligence agency to know what was going on in their Melanesian country.”

Although Vanuatu’s decision represents a setback for U.S. and Australian interests, the South Pacific Forum recently concluded a regional fishing agreement with the U.S. government and U.S. tuna fishermen.

The 13 forum members and three smaller Micronesian jurisdictions will receive $12 million a year, $10 million from the U.S. government and the other $2 million from the tuna fishermen. U.S. officials hope that accord will reduce the economic lure of Soviet fishing pacts.