Word: nauru
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...Nauru is no Bali Ha'i, but it suits its 2,700 inhabitants down to the ground. Since the ground is almost solid phosphate, the natives support themselves by selling it off at the rate of some 1,800,000 tons a year. The only cloud on the horizon is the fact that by 1995 the 5,263-acre island will be stripped of phosphate (used for fertilizer), leaving a big, barren pothole in the Pacific, 2,500 miles northeast of Sydney. Then Nauru's dark-skinned population will have to move to another, less tight little island...
...rate, they will leave in style. Last week Nauru's elected chieftain, Hammer deRoburt, finished hammering out a contract with its principal phosphate customers-Australia, New Zealand, Britain-that will assure the island's 500 families a kitty of $225 million by the time the phosphate runs out. Under the agreement, deRoburt, 42, more than trebled his people's royalties (to $1.50 a ton, retroactive to July 1, 1964) and extracted yet another price boost (to $1.97), effective next year. The Australian government, which administers the island as a U.N. trust territory, will hold most...
...sworn in as U.S. representative to the U.N. Trusteeship Council, which oversees such places as the Mariana Islands, Nauru and Northeast New Guinea, with the rank of ambassador...
Color Bar. But last week the deal collapsed, for the Nauruans were insisting that they get sovereignty over the island in exchange for moving there. Australia had no intention of giving up complete control of a territory so close to its shores. An alternative scheme to resettle Nauru's minuscule populace in Australia was rejected by the dusky islanders for fear of race discrimination by the Australians, who frankly practice the color...
...Canberra, burly Head Chief deRoburt stomped out after conferences with Australia's Minister for Territories Charles Barnes and Prime Minister Robert Menzies, vowing: "The whole world will know how you've treated us!" With that, DeRoburt announced that his people would now remain on Nauru and seek to have it filled with crop-growing soil, take over the remaining phosphate deposits-and become an independent state by 1967. Whether the latter will come to pass remains to be seen. But clearly what the Nauruans want is just what South Pacific's Bloody Mary recommended-their own special...