Pacific

American Samoa status "anachronistic"

12:43 pm on 20 May 2014

American Samoa will tell a UN special committee on decolonisation that it does not feel it is a colony of the United States.

The House Speaker in American Samoa Savali Talavou Ale will tell a UN special committee that American Samoa does not feel it's a colony of the United States.

The United Nations Pacific Seminar on Decolonisation is meeting in Fiji this week

The speaker will tell the Committee the American Samoa Government exists by virtue of delegation of authority from the US president.

The statement to be delivered on behalf of the Governor Lolo Moliga says the American Samoa Legislature cannot now override a veto of a bill by the governor without the approval of the Secretary of the Interior and the local constitution cannot be amended without the approval of the Congress.

This is despite Congress never having approved the constitution to begin with.

The UN Committee will be told the territory's legal status is "an anachronism that needs to be remedied" for American Samoa to meet the standards for consideration for de-listing by the Committee.