Clark backs Blair's sincerity over run-up to war with Iraq

By THERESA GARNER

Prime Minister Helen Clark is supporting her British counterpart, Tony Blair, in his credibility battle over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

In an off-the-cuff interview on BBC radio's Talking Point show, Helen Clark said she believed Blair was sincere in the run-up to the war.

In London for a gathering of world leaders of centre-left parties, she responded to questions phoned in and emailed from around the world.

On Tony Blair

Helen Clark was told by a London caller that Britons felt "taken for a ride" by their leader.

She responded: "I believe that at absolutely every point, Tony Blair was sincere and acting on the information that he believed was available to him."

But she noted that there were questions over the intelligence reports and said "longer-term analysis" would look at how much was hard evidence and how much was circumstantial.

On missing Iraq weapons

Helen Clark said that had New Zealand gone to war and had to face the questions of missing weapons of mass destruction, "you'd find our Government in considerable trouble at home".

Quizzed on the stance, she said New Zealand did the right thing in not backing the war.

"Notwithstanding the frustration" over Iraq's treatment of weapons inspectors, "we felt we had to keep the process working".

She said she understood why the United States took military action after the September 11, 2001, attacks on "the heart of the US economic system".

"That, I believe, made the Americans very threat-conscious, very security-conscious and I think Iraq kind of got whacked up into that.

"Psychologically, I understand that sense of pressure and sense of threat. It's just that we came to a different evaluation about what the significance of Iraq was."

She said weapons inspectors "could have got to the bottom" of whether there were weapons or not. "The way the process was curtailed, of course, meant that there couldn't be an orderly resolution to the crisis."

If no weapons were found "then that reinforces the view most people had about whether the world should have gone down a path of war".

But Helen Clark distanced herself from any suggestion that Britain and the US would live to regret the war. "My concern now is to try to put a ring around the very serious international disagreement over it and look forward."

She did not expect New Zealand to be disadvantaged because of its "principled' stance on the war.

"Generally, New Zealand is respected for the positions it takes because it thinks them through."

On prostitution

New Zealand's progressive social legislation was a hot topic, with Helen Clark defending prostitution law reform, and pointing to further debate over gay "marriages", cannabis and euthanasia.

"I personally find prostitution quite abhorrent," she said, but "it's better to be honest about the fact that your society has prostitution".

The Prime Minister said her Government was going through all laws, practices and conventions to find anything that did not measure up to international human rights standards.

"We have work going on for what we're calling a civil union legislation, which will enable homosexual couples to legalise relationships."

The Civil Union Bill has been put forward by Napier MP Russell Fairbrother.

On cannabis

On marijuana law reform, Helen Clark said the drug's use was "plain dopey" but she would vote for any private member's bill on the issue to go to select committee.

Telling young people not to use cannabis was "almost an invitation to do it", she said.

"In a sense you have to come in from the shadows, in a way as I've described with prostitution, to deal with the health issues.

"I'm not persuaded that a drug like cannabis needs to be a heavy criminal activity in the eyes of the law."

* Helen Clark will face pressure to back Western intervention in rogue nations such as Iraq, reports from Britain said yesterday.

The Progressive Governance Conference she is attending will consider a document proposing Western intervention anywhere there is civil unrest or a tyrant, the Independent on Sunday newspaper reports.

Most nations represented at the summit opposed the Iraq war.

A spokeswoman for Helen Clark told NZPA that the Prime Minister did not expect the Canadian proposal to cause division within the summit, even though it is reported to have caused a row between Mr Blair and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

The document proposed intervention at a level that would have justified the war in Iraq, even if the weapons of mass destruction are never found.

It would also give Western powers the authority to attack a country whose ruler was inflicting unnecessary suffering on the populace.

- NZPA

Herald Feature: Iraq