KEY POINTS:
A comment by National Party leader John Key that the war in Iraq "is over" has been seized on by his political opponents as evidence of his inexperience in the highly sensitive world of foreign affairs.
Mr Key yesterday explained that Iraq was not mentioned in his party's foreign affairs, defence, and trade discussion-document because "frankly the war in Iraq is over".
"The war was over in a very short period of time and you've now got a situation where the main coalition forces are looking to withdraw their efforts out of Iraq," Mr Key said on Radio New Zealand.
The statement has raised eyebrows in some quarters because tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed and several hundred coalition troops have died in Iraq this year alone.
Mr Key defended his comment by saying he was "technically right", and he had meant the "conventional war" was over.
"I'm not arguing that insurgency is not fully in operation - of course it is," Mr Key said.
"The technical war in Iraq was about two weeks."
Asked when he felt the "conventional war" had ended, Mr Key referred to when Saddam Hussein was overthrown and pointed to the fact an Iraqi government was now in place.
"Now there is an Iraqi government, and that's not fighting the Coalition of the Willing, is it?," he said.
Mr Key's comments threatened to take some of the gloss off National's gaffe-free release of its foreign affairs, defence and trade discussion-document the day before.
Foreign affairs is an area where every word uttered by a Prime Minister is closely watched, and Mr Key conceded he could have been clearer in what he said.
"I should have said the conventional war. I meant to say the conventional war," he said.
"I can understand why someone would think it's odd - I just think I'm technically right."
New Zealand had a small team of engineers in Iraq for much of 2004, with the aim of conducting reconstruction and humanitarian work under UN auspices, before their commitment ended in late 2004.
US President George W. Bush famously declared "mission accomplished" in Iraq when he flew on to the giant aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln as long ago as 2003, in a sequence that has since been repeated - often in an ironic manner - on television stations worldwide.
Many media reports about Iraq now regularly look ahead to "post-war" or "post-conflict" Iraq.
However, Defence Minister Phil Goff yesterday said it was "absolutely clear" that the conflict in Iraq was not over, and he blasted Mr Key for making a "quite remarkable" statement.
"That statement really does demonstrate the shallowness and inadequacy of his understanding of foreign and defence policy," Mr Goff said from Chile.
"There simply isn't any New Zealander who follows the news each day who doesn't understand that that statement is a nonsense."
Mr Goff said around 768 coalition troops had died in Iraq since February this year, and the situation in Iraq continues to be a critical issue to the whole international community.
"What New Zealanders want to know is whether John Key is capable of making a sound judgment when it comes to international affairs generally, and most importantly to committing New Zealanders to involvement in international conflict," he said.
Mr Goff compared Mr Key's "total lack of experience" in the area to his and Prime Minister Helen Clark's experience. He said they had the best part of 30 years' interest in foreign policy issues when they took up their roles.
Green MP Keith Locke issued a sarcastic press statement saying: "I look forward to hearing Mr Key resolve the Israeli-Palestinian crisis next week, and move on to resolve global poverty by Christmas."
