STORY:
Tonga Changing Time To See Millennium First

Country may adopt daylight-savings in order to get jump on Millennium

Tonga is considering a dramatic move that could give the tiny Polynesian kingdom the claim of being the first place on earth to experience the arrival of the Year 2000. Lawmakers are considering a new law that will move the kingdom into daylight-savings time.

By doing so, the island nation of 100,000 people will be one hour ahead of the much larger country of Fiji and the Chatham Islands of New Zealand. Both areas are claiming to be the first in the world to experience the Year 2000. The move would steal some prime public relations and tourism dollars from countries that will experience the Year 2000 one hour later.

The bill now sits before Tonga's 27-member parliament for action. Tonga's Visitors Bureau is pushing for passage to help the country's slumping tourism business. By moving to daylight-savings, the Visitor's Bureau can claim Tonga as the first country in the world ring in the New Year and generate more tourists. It also says the time shift would result in 5,000 new cruise passengers to the country.

Pitt Island, one of the Chatham Islands east of New Zealand and with a population of 58, is the current favorite to win the race to be the first inhabited territory to see in the new century.

The Royal Greenwich Observatory in London, the keeper of Greenwich Mean Time confused things further by saying time zones do not need the sanction of any outside authority.

Years ago, Tonga used provision of international law to bend the dateline around the country in an eastern direction. Without the line shift, Tonga would have joined the islands of American Somoa as the last place to experience the turn of the century.

DATE: 8/23/99

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