Hint of Government change on peacekeeper role

By AUDREY YOUNG

The Prime Minister has refused to answer direct questions about the possibility of sending New Zealand peacekeepers to a United States-administered Iraq, suggesting the Government may be reconsidering its position.

Helen Clark said last month that New Zealand peacekeepers would not be deployed if the US military was still running Iraq.

"We would be delighted to assist with United Nations peacekeeping," she said on March 24.

But an offer to work in Iraq under US control is believed to be part of the damage-control package NZ is offering up to make up for the Prime Minister's slight on the White House.

Her comments that the war was not going to plan and that it would never have happened if Democrat Al Gore had been elected President were reported to high levels in the George W. Bush Administration, just as the President was being lobbied about a free trade deal for NZ.

Yesterday in Parliament, National leader Bill English asked Helen Clark if she stood by her policy of taking no part in the reconstruction of postwar Iraq unless the UN was control.

"And has she given any undertakings to take part while the United States remains in control?"

Helen Clark: "The Government is having discussions with a number of capitals and with the UN about the legal basis for providing assistance.

"We are very keen to help the people of Iraq."

It was her third day of being grilled by Opposition party leaders.

Act leader Richard Prebble said the Prime Minister would not be able to retract her "inadequate apology" because it had already been reported on news outlets worldwide, including CBS News, South China Morning Post, The Statesman, The Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald and Agence France-Presse.

"Has she ever been so well reported before?"

He believed there was no possibility of a free-trade deal between NZ and the US because of Helen Clark's "armchair generalship".

National trade spokesman Lockwood Smith said New Zealand was less relevant than Morocco, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, and Swaziland, which the US was proposing to negotiate free trade deals with.

Trade Negotiations Minister Jim Sutton said that as the largest marketplace in the world, "the United States was always going to have a busy dance card".

"We are actively working to encourage the United States to add New Zealand to that dance card."