Tuvalu Rejects Proposal For Vatican City State

FUNAFUTI, Tuvalu (July 4, 2001 – Radio Australia)---The government has rejected a proposal from the Maharishi Spiritual Movement to establish a Vatican City-type sovereign state within Tuvalu on land next to the country's international airport.

Radio Australia correspondent Sean Dorney reports that Tuvalu found the offer tempting.

"The Maharishi Spiritual Movement had offered Tuvalu -- which has a population of about ten thousand -- more than two million dollars a year for the right to set up its own country within Tuvalu.

"That's equivalent to about ten percent of the Tuvalu government's annual revenue.

"Tuvalu's high commissioner to Fiji, Taukilina Finikaso, has told the regional news service, Pacnews, that the movement -- which was established by the Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi -- had wanted to have its own constitution, its own currency and run its own mini-state along the lines of Vatican City in Rome, Italy.

"He said he believed their aim was to gain United Nations recognition as a sovereign state.

"The high commissioner said that although the offer was tempting it was rejected because Tuvalu was unsure what the consequencesmight be.

"Sean Dorney, Radio Australia."

http://www.tuvaluislands.com/

Tuvalu rejected an offer of $2 million per year from the Maharishi Spiritual Movement

Freedom in the World 2002 - Tuvalu
18 December 2001

In December 2000, Prime Minister Ionatana Ionatana suffered a heart attack and died immediately after a speech at a public function. In February 2001, Faimalaga Luka was elected as his successor by the parliament after a period of official mourning. Tuvalu, along with several other Pacific Island nations, received a request in November from Australia to shelter asylum seekers from the Middle East whom Australia refused to accept. In early December, the government collapsed after four members of parliament turned against the prime minister and voted in support of a no-confidence motion. Koloa Talake, one of the floor-crossers, was elected as prime minister by a slim majority on December 13.

Tuvalu, formerly known as the Ellice Islands, is a small, predominantly Polynesian country, consisting of nine atolls stretching over 500,000 miles of the western Pacific Ocean. The islands were proclaimed a British protectorate with the Gilbert Islands (now independent Kiribati) in 1892 and were formally annexed by Britain in 1915-1916, when the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was established. The Ellice and Gilbert Islands separated in October 1975, and the former were renamed Tuvalu. The country became an independent member of the Commonwealth in 1978. In Tuvalu's first post independence general election in September 1971, Dr. Tomasi Puapua was elected prime minister. In April 1999, parliament elected Ionatana Ionatana, a former education minister, as the new prime minister. Tuvalu became the 189th member of the United Nations in 2000.