Utopia in Mid-Ocean

THE PACIFIC

Next Jan. 31, if all goes according to schedule, a tiny, null palm-fringed speck in the Pacific, some 1,700 miles northeast of Australia, will become the world's newest nation. The Republic of Nauru, administered by Australia as a U.N. trust territory since 1947, will have a native population of 3,000, smallest of any nation state. But what Nauruans lack in numbers they make up with money. They have per capita income of about $4,000, compared with $3,648 for the U.S.

Fully two-thirds of Nauru contains deep deposits of phosphates that are used for fertilizers. These are being dug up and exported at the rate of 1,500,000 tons a year by the British Phosphate Commission, run jointly by Britain, Australia and New Zealand. In return, the commission has installed many facilities on the island and pays the natives a royalty that has just been raised to $15,400,000 a year.

The result is almost pure Utopia. Nauruans enjoy free schools, medical and dental care, electricity and water, pay minimal rents and no import duties or taxes. Under an agreement announced last week by Australia to the U.N. Trusteeship Council, Nauruans will be given partial control of the mining industry July 1; after they finish paying for it in three years, they will get complete control. Under the complex new arrangements, most of the profits from the phosphate diggings will be held in trust and reinvested. Conservative estimates are that 30 years from now, when the phosphate deposits have finally run out, each Nauruan family will be collecting a perpetual income of well over $25,000 a year.

Nauruans, however, still have a major worry: since 1900, more than 38 million tons of their atoll have been scooped up and shipped out, leaving only barren, gaping holes. The natives fear that they may soon have little territory left on which to enjoy their wealth. The most probable solution is that filthy rich Nauru will import dirt to replace the phosphates.

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