NZBS WILL RECORD INQUIRY FOR UN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 420, 11 July 1947, Page 20

NZBS WILL RECORD INQUIRY FOR UN

Talks Director and Technicians Leave for Samoa

HEN members of the United Nations Trusteeship Council’s mission to Western Samoa left Auckland last Friday, to hear, both formally, and on their own hearths, the petition of Western Samoans for independence, they were accompanied by a party of

three fram the NZBS. The broadcasting unit will, when the commission gets to work, cover the radio side of the ‘inquiry ‘on behalf of the Information ‘Section of United Nations. As there are no radio facilities, there will be no direct broadcasts of the proceedings from Samoa, but J. H. Hall (Supervisor of Talks for the NZBS), D. Cameron, df Wellington, and G. E. Gruzelier, of Auckland (tecinicians) will make records for the United Nations archives. These recordings will be sent to New Zealand; the originals will be kept by the NZBS for historical purposes, and copies will be made for UN. Their primary value will be, of course, historical. First Mission of Its Kind Daily news of the inquiry will come to New Zealand by radio telegraph, and parts may be broadcast in the New Zealand news bulletins. It is also possible that recorded news bulletins will be transmitted on shortwave to North America by Radio Australia. This is the first trusteeship mission to be sent to any territory. Under the League of Nations covenant, there was no provisién for such missions to visit what were then known as mandated territories. But the position is now different. When the New Zealand Government received the Samoans’ petition for self-government it sent it on to the Trusteeship Council, asking for a mission to look into the whole position, Before the mission left New Zealand its members spent some days in Well-

ington, studying details of the administration .of Western Samoa, Now its job is to meet all types of Western Samoans on their own ground. The chiefs believe that they can now stand on their own feet, and so they ask for independence, with New Zealand acting as protector and adviser in the same relationship to them as England bears to the people of Tonga. Extensive Investigation The inquiry will last through July and part of August. The idea, at the moment, is to hold formal meetings, probably in Apia; and to follow them up with visits to the smaller islands in the group. In this way the members of the mission will be able to give all Western Samoans every chance of put-S ting their case. When the work in Samoa is over and the data collated, the mission will return to the United States to prepare its report. It will make recommendations to a meeting of the Trusteeship Council to be held in November, and the council will give its views. The mission will have no official connection with American Samoa. Special provision for this territory as an American posession is being made by legislation now befofe the United States Congress. The mission is being led by the President of the UN Trusteeship Council, F. B. Sayre, former Assistant Secretary of State for the United States, and at one time United States High Commissioner to the Philippines. He is accompanied by Dr. Pierre Ryckmans, formerly*Gov-ernor-General of the Belgian Congo, and Dr. Eduardo Cruz-Coke, a Chilean senator. A New Zealander, Professor Felix M. Keesing, who is an authority on the people of the Pacific, will act as expert consultant. The secretariat consists of Peter Anker, of Norway, C. Leite, of Brazil, and» M, de la Roche, who was with the Frée French Forces in Africa during the war.