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BUDDHA: Newest U.N. Member Stays Busy


>Newsgroups: clari.world.oceania,clari.world.organizations
>Subject: Newest U.N. Member Stays Busy
>Organization: Copyright 1995 by The Associated Press
>Date: Tue, 24 Oct 1995 13:30:18 PDT

  	  	
	UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- When you're the newest, smallest fry in 
the geopolitical sea, you quickly learn to swim with the big fish.  
	So there was Kuniwo Nakamura this week, rubbing elbows with King 
Hussein of Jordan, talking environment with ``Hillary,'' trading 
favors with Japan, and rehearsing for his five minutes at the U.N. 
rostrum, his chance to tell the world -- the WORLD -- what course to 
set for the 21st century.  
	If only the folks back home in Palau could see their president 
at the U.N. 50th anniversary celebration.  
	That's P-A-L-A-U. Rhymes with ``Wow!'' And that says it all for 
the beautiful sprinkling of far Pacific islands that this smiling, 
52-year-old economist presides over. Not only is Palau the newest 
U.N. member, gaining independence just last December after a 
half-century as a U.S. trusteeship; it's also the smallest, with 
just 16,000 people.  
	And Nakamura can't wait to get back.  
	``Get me out of here!'' he said Tuesday. ``I don't know how New 
Yorkers can survive. Give me the slow pace, relaxed, more humane.''  
	Actually, his New York digs looked pretty humane -- a plush 
$500-a-night Grand Hyatt suite under Secret Service guard 32 
stories above 42nd Street.  
	``It's extravagant for us,'' he conceded. ``But they recommended 
it for security reasons. All I need is a place to sleep. I don't 
even need a bed.''  
	Inhumane or not, Nakamura took advantage of his hectic four days 
in New York to run with the barracudas, the whales, and even some 
fellow small fish.  
	He and the presidents of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands 
held their own summit to compare notes and coordinate strategy on 
the American aid programs all three inherited as former U.S. 
Pacific island territories.  
	On his own, the hustling Nakamura engineered some diplomatic 
horse-trading with another benefactor, the government of Japan, 
exchanging his desirable Sunday speaking spot for Prime Minister 
Tomiichi Murayama's original Tuesday slot. Japan now owes him.  
	But the high points of this short, solid, bespectacled man's 
turn in the global spotlight were the less serious encounters with 
the high and the mighty.  
	``I shook hands with Yeltsin, and Arafat, and Rabin,'' he 
reported. And at a group photo session for all 180-odd world 
leaders, he made small talk with his right-hand neighbor, King 
Hussein, and came away impressed with the Jordanian monarch's 
knowledge of Pacific geography.  
	``Even Mrs. Clinton knows about Palau,'' said Nakamura, who got 
to pose with Bill and Hillary for a memento shot at a black-tie 
reception in New York's Public Library, a gargantuan building 
that's as big as downtown Koror, Palau's tiny capital.  
	``She knew that Palau had a very clean environment, and diving 
spots, and so on,'' he said.  
	The busy islander topped off his social whirl Monday evening 
with the glittering U.N. anniversary concert of the New York 
Philharmonic, reached by flashing, wailing motorcade across town.  
	All the while, the soft-spoken, University of Hawaii-educated 
president was polishing and rehearsing his five-minute U.N. speech, 
an appeal on behalf of the Pacific environment and against nuclear 
testing that ends with an analogy likening the United Nations to 
his ancestors' ocean-crossing boats.  
	``We must all learn to sail together,'' he wrote, ``if our 
voyage is to be successful.''  
	Then, at 11:45 a.m. Tuesday, the moment arrived. As the neophyte 
statesman waited in the wings, his cue resounded through the 
General Assembly hall:  
	``His Excellency, Mr. Kuniwo Nakamura, president of the Republic 
of Palau!''
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