CONFIDENTIAL
FP
Reference.......
D
Miss McIntosh
MAED
WH MZ 13
REGISTRY No. 52
14 JAN 27
CONVENTION FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC REGION (SPREP)
1.
Thank you for your minute of 8 January. I can confirm that SPD would wish to give the fullest possible backing for UK signature of the SPREP Convention. This assumes that Legal Advisers can agree that any doubts of substance which we might have could be met by means of suitable reservations entered on signing.
2. The most obvious political point is that, with France and the US having signed the Convention, the UK would stand alone amongst metropolitan powers in refusing to sign. This is an invidious position for us. The Convention was drawn up under the aegis of the South Pacific Commission (SPC), a body of which the UK was a founder member. We have relied on our continuing membership of the SPC as one of the weapons in our armory to rebut claims that Britain was pulling out of the South Pacific. Such an argument would undoubtedly be weakened were we to maintain a refusal to sign such a major plank in the SPC's platform. Our position will also look odd in view of our, as yet unnannounced, intention to make extra-budgetary contributions to the SPC out of our share of the residual assets of the British Phosphate Commissioners.
3. I have to confess that I find it difficult to understand any continued Whitehall reluctance to sign the SPREP Convention in the light of French and US signature. It would be hard to defend our not signing the Convention (impossible to do so plausibly in the South Pacific) when France has done so. I also note (your minute of 18 July to Mr Thom) that the US had achieved agreement that nothing in the Convention or its Protocols should prejudice or affect the application of the LDC. An agreement subsequently enshrined in article 4 (3) of the Convention (as enclosed with Mr Barltrop's letter of 4 December).
4.
Whatever fears might exist about the possible effects of the Convention on our LDC position, they must surely be less than previous French fears about its possible effects on their nuclear testing programme within the South Pacific region.
5. You will know from the meeting on 7 January, that the most pressing problem in relations between the South Pacific states and the US, France and ourselves is the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty (SPNFZT). The consensus of the meeting was that, since we are not likely for the foreseeable future to be able to sign SPNFZT, we could sweeten the pill by agreeing to accede to SPREP. I strongly endorse this view. It is, I have to say, unlikely that our change of heart on SPREP would fully compensate in South Pacific eyes our decision on SPNFZ. however, help not least by giving added substance to our statement that, despite our refusal to sign SPNFZT, we intend to stick to the spirit of that treaty.
It would,
CONF
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