* Barak Sope *

Barak Sope, a New Hebridean student will be visiting New Zealand over the next couple of weeks speaking on Pacific Islanders attitudes to the French Bomb Tests and linking the tests more generally to the impact of French Colonialism in the Pacific.

Sope's trip is being financed by the Overseas Speakers Fund of NZUSA at a time when interest is alive on university campuses and in New Zealand at large on the issue of French bomb testing. NZUSA feels that the opportunity should be taken to provide up to date information on the nature of French colonialism in the South Pacific and on anti-French social and political movements in New Caledonia and the New Hebrides.

Sope is a degree 3 student in the School of Social and Economic Development at U.S.P majoring in Political Science. He has been educated in both French and British schools at the primary level and British schools at the secondary level. He has been involved With local political movements such as Na Grimmel within the New Hebrides and in 1972 he represented the New Hebrides at the Waigani Seminar held annually in New Guinea. This Seminar provides a forum for more radical Pacific Islanders to air their views on political independence etc. The New Hebrides archipelago is jointly administered by France and Great Britain as the world's only condominium. The two colonial powers have placed very little emphasis on the promotion of decentralisation or decolonisation. In accordance with the Protocol which Britain and France signed in 1906 no regulation or factors concerning the development and the administering of the New Hebrides can be passed unless the two powers jointly agree to it. Barak Sope, as a [unclear: radi-ical] young graduate in years to come will be called upon to lead the fight against the colonial powers who 'administer' his country.