New Zealand Leader Sees Libya Making Move in S. Pacific

Prime Minister David Lange said Monday that Libya appears to be making a fresh diplomatic thrust into the South Pacific but indicated that the drive could be blunted if richer nations in the region provide more help to the groups being wooed.

Lange said there appears to have been some contacts between Libya and pro-independence groups in French-ruled New Caledonia after Tripoli’s diplomatic successes in already-independent Vanuatu.

He said that if people in Vanuatu and New Caledonia are frustrated “because they haven’t had what they see as proper solidarity and support from regional nations, the temptation is that they do go ahead and flamboyantly forge what could be quite detrimental linkages with other countries.”

Lange told a news conference that New Zealand, which established diplomatic relations with Libya in 1983, has stopped expressing doom about the situation.

“We’re working to see that they (groups being wooed by Libya) do not get driven into romantic and peculiar liaisons with countries whose interests don’t coincide with our region,” he said.