Moore on attack over Iraq

By SIMON COLLINS

Former Prime Minister Mike Moore has attacked critics of war in Iraq, accusing them of moral inconsistency.

Making his first foray into domestic politics since retiring as director-general of the World Trade Organisation, Mr Moore said yesterday that the US-led war against terror was a battle between modernism and a medieval religious order.

He condemned the leaders of seven churches who issued a joint statement last week urging the Government to stay out of war against Iraq unless it was endorsed by the United Nations and all peaceful options had been exhausted.

By implication, he also condemned Prime Minister Helen Clark, who displaced him as Labour Party leader after the 1993 election. She has said New Zealand would not join a war in Iraq except as part of a United Nations force.

But Mr Moore said last night: "I am not attacking the New Zealand Government. I have been supportive of the New Zealand Government.

"What the Government did in Afghanistan was correct, and in Timor we have taken the right position."

Mr Moore earlier told a Knowledge Wave Trust forum in Auckland that being small was no excuse for New Zealand to stand aside.

"Venice was a small city-state. Victorian England was not that huge," he said.

"We probably now have the population that the American colonies had at the time of their revolution."

Being distant from other countries gave New Zealand a false sense of security.

Mr Moore said he was puzzled by those who opposed the war on terror. There was no comparison between a terrorist who aimed to maximise civilian casualties and a responsible government that aimed to minimise them.

"I can understand the view that war is killing, murder. You can be a pacifist.

"But there has to be moral consistency. If somehow the United Nations sanctifies it, that is no longer murder or death?

"I think we are up against something we have not seen for generations. A battle is being played out between modernism and those who seek a return to a religious order not seen since the Middle Ages, those whom the Reformation and the Age of Reason passed by."

What happened in the next year would define the world for a generation.

"I'm not frightened by American unilateralism," he said. "I'm more frightened by isolationism."

Helen Clark was not present to hear Mr Moore's speech.

Last night, her office said the Government's stand on the potential Iraq conflict had been set out in New York at a United Nations meeting.

New Zealand's ambassador Don McKay told the the UN Security Council's open debate on Iraq that an attack was not justified at this time.

"The New Zealand Government has a very strong preference for a diplomatic solution to this crisis," he said.

"We place considerable weight on the inspection and disarmament process. We believe it should run its course."

Mr McKay said the Government did not support military action against Iraq without a Security Council mandate, and did not believe that was justified at present.

Mr Moore also hit back at Helen Clark's attack at the forum on the "discredited" policies of the 1980s and 1990s, which he championed as Trade Minister in the 1984-90 Labour Government.

He said that Government had dismantled protectionism and sought to create wealth and opportunity.

- additional reporting, NZPA

Herald feature: Iraq