Editorial: WikiLeaks cables throw welcome light on diplomacy

John Key. Photo / Getty Images

New Zealand's governments have suffered little damage from WikiLeaks releases so far. The United States Embassy's hitherto secret dispatches to Washington reveal positions taken and decisions by successive New Zealand governments that reflect well on them.

The Clark Government, for example, resisted a request to take Uighur refugees from China who were detained at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. A message sent to Washington by an embassy official in 2005 quoted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade's chief executive, Simon Murdoch, who pointed out this country had no Uighur community, and had filled its refugee quota for the next two years.

Doubtless, the official's suspicion that New Zealand's decision would be influenced by free trade negotiations with China was also correct. If the decision was made by the Foreign Minister at the time, Phil Goff, and Immigration Minister Paul Swain, they made the right call.

If this country was to antagonise an important trade partner, it ought to be for a reason much more urgent and compelling than asylum for people with no family or connections here.

Likewise, the WikiLeaks material reveals the Clark Government offered Army engineers for a non-combat role in Iraq out of fear that Fonterra might otherwise lose a lucrative contract to supply the United Nations' oil-for-food programme. Again, sensible. Helen Clark was right to refuse to support US aggression and right to take part in its reconstruction efforts, whether or not a trade contract depended on it. Principle and pragmatism do not always collide.

We probably have pragmatism to thank for the fact that the US quietly restored military co-operation with New Zealand in a number of ways in 2007. Helen Clark would have been eager to publicise these implicit concessions to her anti-nuclear stance, but at the wish of the US she kept her discretion.

She probably also knew the breakthrough that year owed as much to the Opposition's new leader, John Key, who convinced the US Embassy that National would not change the anti-nuclear policy.

Mr Key's pragmatism has also been revealed on the subject of last year's visit by the Dalai Lama. The US Embassy reports a briefing at which a New Zealand Foreign Affairs official said the Prime Minister had assured the Chinese premier that neither he nor any of his ministers would meet the Tibetan nationalist figurehead. Foreign Minister Murray McCully denied in Parliament that any such decision was made but the embassy cable carries its own credibility.

If Mr Key has deliberately misled the public on this issue he might be forgiven. The public could see the Dalai Lama was shunned and make its own judgment. Actions in foreign relations often speak louder than diplomatic words.

WikiLeaks may yet throw out something from hundreds of pages of email traffic that seriously damages this Government or the reputation of it predecessor. But as yet we have not seen it.

What has been reported are accurate and sometimes interesting US observations on our recent political figures, reflecting the familiarity diplomats of both countries have managed to maintain through the era of the nuclear dispute. It is clear that recent embassy officials have given Washington an accurate picture of public sentiment on the nuclear issue in this country, which might not have been the case earlier.

The New Zealand material from WikiLeaks reinforces much that we already knew, and offers some details we had a right to know. The Clark Cabinet's consideration of Fonterra's interest in Iraq and the Key Cabinet's boycott of the Dalai Lama are the sort of matters that cannot be announced but nor should they be denied. Sensible, practical diplomacy has to include public accountability.