TNAG-0925-FCO40-1143-Commonwealth-Parliamentary-Association-(CPA)-annual-conferen-1980 — Page 36

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Twenty-fifth Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference

arrived in their own aircraft, but the new airfields had created a major security problem-his country was now the most-used stepping stone for drug traffickers between South and North America. This had corrupted police, and customs and immigration officers, and was having disastrous effect on the young.

The elected Government knew that payoffs from drug traffickers were its fourth largest source of income. It had repeatedly asked the United Kingdom for a trained, effective force to maintain national integrity and the security of the islands' coasts and ports, but it had been told that defence, civil discipline, and international relations were reserved to the British Government and the Secretary of State in London.

British policy was that his country could not have more security responsibilities unless it became independent in 12 months, but they were not yet ready. Such a time scale had not been levied on Bermuda or the Falkland Islands. The Turks and Caicos Islands wanted the support of all members of the Commonwealth for a constitutional change from dependent colony to full internal self-government, so the Government could direct its own security, negotiate defence arrangements with neighbours equally concerned about the drug traffic, and work with the United States and other drug enforcement agencies.

Tuvalu had no means of defence should any threat to its security arise, said its delegate. Police, communications, and customs could cope with normal requirements only, although they had recently successfully arrested and prosecuted two vessels in their territorial and economic waters zone.

Jamaica, said its delegation leader, had an idea that some larger powers wished to modify the principle of "one State one vote" because they felt that small States had a disproportionate influence in the international community. Larger States still felt that because of their economic dominance and population sizes they should dominate everything. Therefore, any concern by those major powers for the security and future of small States must be viewed with suspicion.

Technical aid was a problem when small countries could not fully satisfy returning citizens who had been trained abroad; they soon returned to the developed countries that had educated them.

For security, small States needed self-determination and protection from armed intervention and external domination. Security also lay in technical skill and technology.

The security of smaller nations, said the leader of the Australian delegation, surely involved the economic as well as the military sphere. He was delighted with the move towards a closer association between his country and New Zealand and thought this should happen with other Pacific and Asian countries. He believed the Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference was more important than the Prime Ministers' Conference.

The Regional Representative for the Mediterranean and British Islands said Malta was mostly concerned with regional security. His tiny island, neutral and non-aligned, was poised at the centre of an extremely turbulent but interdependent area, the meeting place of three continents. To talk of permanent security there today would amount to sheer wishful thinking, but Malta had begun to insist on an acknowledgment of the need for security in the Mediterranean in any plan pretending to promise security and co-operation in Europe. Malta nourished the vision of a Mediterranean family of nations, whose idea of security would finally exclude the type achieved through military strength. Malta was in search of the security achieved only through solidarity, a common concern for one another, and the will to work for themselves and for the different nations around them.

An Indian delegate maintained that the inequitable distribution of wealth was the real reason for the insecurity of smaller countries, and that the answer lay in the implementation of the Singapore resolution adopted in 1971. Towards that end, closer regional co-operation should be established, and a planning commission set up to assist economic development and the transfer of aid.

India was opposed to the use of nuclear energy for military purposes, and to multilateral alliances conceived within the context of great power rivalry. Smaller Commonwealth territories were faced with preserving not only their economic security, but their independence.