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Former Trade Negotiations Minister Jim Sutton says New Zealand has a good professional working relationship with Robert Zoellick - who is set to become the World Bank's next President.
And National Party trade spokesman and former trade negotiator Tim Groser, who chaired the World Trade Organisation agricultural negotiations
where Mr Zoellick was chief US negotiator, believes he is a "good friend of New Zealand's".
As a man he was: "Intellectually brilliant. Very, very tough. ... "
US President George W. Bush is expected today to announce Mr Zoellick as his selection to replace Paul Wolfowitz.
Mr Sutton worked with Mr Zoellick for about four of the six years that he held the trade negotiation portfolio.
He trusted Mr Zoellick and believed he was "genuinely regretful" that New Zealand did not get a free-trade agreement with the US.
While New Zealand had a "good professional working relationship" with him, Mr Sutton said they had got off to a rough start.
Mr Sutton met Mr Zoellick when he was an official in the State Department working on the New Zealand desk around the time New Zealand decided to be nuclear-free.
"That obviously still rankled very much. In my first meeting with him he very pointedly observed that he felt the United States should use trade policy to advance its wider interests," Mr Sutton said.
Did he want to punish New Zealand? "He wouldn't be caught saying that, but that was the unmistakable inference that I drew."
"The feeling I got was 'my God, we've got a bit of work to do with this guy'. But we did that and we ended up with a very good relationship and mutual trust and I think respect."
Mr Zoellick rose up the ranks and helped launch the Doha round of world trade talks, completed negotiations to bring China and Taiwan into the World Trade Organisation and later continued a major focus on China as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's top deputy.
Mr Sutton said Mr Zoellick was, "very, very intense and he can be very blunt; he can be quite short tempered actually - he never was with me but I have seen him be quite short-tempered".
However, Mr Zoellick's integrity could not be faulted, he said.
Mr Wolfowitz was forced to quit over a pay and promotion package he arranged for his girlfriend Shaha Riza, a bank employee.
"It is impossible for me to imagine Bob Zoellick doing anything even faintly improper," Mr Sutton said.
"I find it impossible to imagine him abusing his power in unethical ways."
Mr Groser said while Mr Zoellick was hard-line he had played a key role as Deputy Secretary of State trying to help Darfur.
"Although he's a fairly hard-line market man, he's certainly a man who considers the development issues to be of central importance and I think he will be both an excellent appointment and also a good friend of New Zealand's."
Mr Groser said Mr Zoellick had a good grasp of where New Zealand stood on issues.
"I wouldn't say he's always said good things about New Zealand but he understands New Zealand really well."
Mr Sutton said Mr Zoellick had a keen interest in military history and collected cufflinks. Mr Sutton once gave him a pair of SAS cufflinks, which are rare.
"I presented them to Bob because he lacks nothing, so it has to have a personal touch."
- NZPA
