Niue backs PNG for a better Tuna Treaty
ISLAND BUSINESS Niue is backing Papua New Guinea in ending a 25-year relations with the United States, after it abrogated the South Pacific Tuna Treaty, signed in 1987. Making the statement a day after being re-elected Niue’s Premier, Toke Talagi said his country was on the same wavelength as PNG, which announced it did not want to continue under the present circumstances. The treaty allows US fishing boats limitless access to the Pacific’s tuna stocks. “We formally give notice to withdraw from the multilateral treaty on fisheries with the U.S.,” acting PNG Prime Minister Sam Abal was quoted as saying in April in the local daily newspaper Post Courier under a banner headline screaming “USA Ejected.” The decision effectively ended two years of fruitless negotiations to renew the treaty. “We’ve been begging them for years to update it, but they haven’t been listening at all,” said Sylvester Pokajam, a senior fisheries official in PNG, who is also the chairman of the Parties to the Nauru