Nukes news bad for trade, says delegate

By PETER GRIFFIN and RUTH BERRY


A New Zealand entrepreneur in a trade delegation to India says bad press from Prime Minister Helen Clark's visit to a factory reported to make nuclear weapons parts has threatened to derail the trip.

Ian Taylor, founder of Dunedin graphics company Animation Research, said the Prime Minister's presence on the trip had put a small group of technology companies in touch with the chiefs of some of India's biggest companies.

But reports from New Zealand about the factory visit had filtered back to India and "shifted the focus of the entire trip".

"The doors she's opened for us are not just doors to India, they're doors to the Fortune 500 companies and to China," Mr Taylor told the Herald from Delhi.


He believed many of the Indian business people he'd met were embarrassed by the incident.

The nuclear row arose from a visit to engineering giant Larsen and Toubro in Mumbai, where public relations staff told New Zealand journalists that the business - India's third biggest company - made nuclear weapons.

Senior company staff later denied the assertion, though the firm does make nuclear power plants and holds defence contracts.

The Prime Minister said yesterday: "If anyone's going to run the line that one shouldn't visit such a company, then Dr [Michael] Cullen couldn't have visited Boeing. He could never go to General Electric."

"What matters to me is that this company has an association with New Zealand earthquake engineering, has an association with food processing and there are many opportunities for New Zealand dealing with big conglomerates in India."

She said she did not know the company was blacklisted by former US President Bill Clinton for its links to the nuclear weapons industry.

Current President George W. Bush lifted the sanctions in 2001.

Mr Taylor's Animation Research has won the contract to supply TV graphics for the next America's Cup regatta.

But strong interest expressed by Indian companies during the trip could result in much more lucrative contracts, he said.

He was talking to one company contracted to build five new airports about supplying it with air-traffic control simulation software.

"The opportunity that could arise for us out of the two days we've spent here could make the America's Cup look like chicken feed."

Mr Taylor said New Zealand had to wake up to the opportunities in India.