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SUVA, Fiji Islands (September 29, 1999 – Fiji Daily Post)---The Asian Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries should unite and seek to protect their sugar markets in the European Union.

This was the gist of Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry's message at the sixth ACP Ministerial Conference on Sugar in Mbabane, Swaziland.

Ministers from the 12 ACP signatory states of the Sugar Protocol, who were attending the conference, heard submissions from the European Union, the International Sugar Organization, Tate and Lyle, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and other relevant sugar industry parties.

The conference examined developments taking place and the likely impact that these developments will have on market access and price arrangements between the ACP and EU.

These include negotiations on a successor agreement to the Lomé Convention, the new round of WTO negotiations on the Agreement on Agriculture due to be...

CONGRESSMAN ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA From American Samoa U.S. House of Representatives Washington, D.C.

NEWS RELEASE September 29, 1999

MANAGEMENT

Congressman Faleomavaega announced today that the American Samoa Government’s Department of Commerce has been awarded $769,000 for its application to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Granted under NOAA’s Coastal Zone Management Administration Awards Program, the funds will be used by the DOC and its Coastal Management office to continue implementing the Territory’s federally approved coastal zone management program. This will include state program administration and implementation; coordination of state and federal agency programs; public outreach; special projects and the Coastal Non-point Source Pollution Control Program.

"As the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Resources for Fisheries, Conservation, Wildlife and Oceans, I am extremely pleased to know that these funds are...

By Pat Omandam

HONOLULU, Hawai‘i (September 29, 1999 – Honolulu Star-Bulletin)---The battle to end shark-finning in the Western Pacific Ocean has now reached Congress, five months after the (Hawai‘i) state Legislature failed to ban it.

A coalition of national conservation groups says a resolution introduced in Congress this week by U.S. Rep. Randy Cunningham (R, Calif.) would prohibit the controversial practice in the U.S. Pacific.

If approved, it would supersede plans by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council to discuss shark management options at its fall and spring meetings. The council oversees fisheries 200 nautical miles around Hawai‘i and other U.S. Pacific islands.

Dr. David Wilmot, director of the Ocean Wildlife Campaign -- a coalition of six conservation groups working to protect sharks and other large ocean fish -- said Monday the number of sharks killed in Hawaiian longline fisheries has climbed from 2,289 in 1991 to 60,857...

GREENPEACE PACIFIC Suva, Fiji Islands

PRESS RELEASE October 1, 1999

An accident at the Tokaimura nuclear site in Japan yesterday exposes once again the lack of an adequate nuclear safety regime in Japan, said Greenpeace. And it makes it all the more important that the South Pacific Forum leaders now meeting in Palau make a strong statement about the MOX (mixed oxide) fuel shipments through the region.

The explosion and contamination of workers at the site north of Tokyo, comes less than 24 hours before the arrival of a shipment of weapons-usable fuel at the Takahama nuclear power plant in Fukui prefecture. This is the same shipment that passed through the South Pacific recently, despite a number of strong protests from Fiji, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

The plutonium shipment is now at the center of a scandal after the producers of the MOX fuel, British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), admitted to falsifying important safety...