KEY POINTS:
Prime Minister Helen Clark is back in New Zealand today after nearly a week away in the United States. She reflects on her visit.
How can a closer relationship between New Zealand and the US - short of a free-trade agreement - materially affect New Zealand?
It's a question of taking that residual tension out of the relationship. The US is the world's only superpower so the relationship is important. For too long, one issue [NZ's anti-nuclear law] was too dominant. Now that issue hasn't gone away but it shouldn't dominate the relationship.
My experience has been that in every country one visits there are always areas of disagreement but it is hard to think of another relationship where an area of disagreement has been allowed to dominate the way this one did and that is what we have been endeavouring to put right. Doesn't mean to say there's not a difference but it shouldn't dominate.
Take the relationship with Japan. Obviously a strong difference of opinion over whaling but does it dominate the relationship? No.
Why do you think President Bush laughed when you mentioned free trade agreement?
Because we had just been through a discussion about the problems we've got in trying to get some bipartisanship on trade and so when I raised it in exactly the same terms I had in the meeting it was "if only I could" because it is a source of great frustration to him.
They are sitting there with agreements completed on Peru, Colombia and Panama and about to complete Korea and they don't know whether they can get any of them through the Congress.
National leader John Key called your visit a "huge foreign relations failure". Your response?
I think he needs more tuition from his panel of [foreign relations] experts.
Did you get the sense that Mr Bush and [Speaker] Nancy Pelosi were distracted?
Yes. The politics is very intense in Washington. There's Iraq, there's the trade policy and of course it was the week of whether Congress was going to haul in the Attorney-General and President Bush's advisers. Those were the three things swirling around and to get two hours of the President's time in the middle of all that was, in a way, extraordinary.
What did you talk about at lunch with Mr Bush?
The meeting [in the Oval Office] was mainly around the bilateral issues and international issues to the extent that we are both working on them. Then in the lunch [in another part of the White House] we got into a lot of other areas. He was quite keen to talk about the trip to Latin America. I've always taken an interest in Latin America, so we had quite a long talk about that and also about the relationship with Russia. So those would have been the two key things. Then the Trade rep [Susan Schwab] came in, so we started the trade conversation as well.
What about the actual lunch?
It was upstairs in the Old Family Dining Room of the West Wing. We had a beautiful lunch. I didn't eat the dessert [Spring Fling]. I was too full from the lobster. It was absolutely beautiful. The President didn't eat his either. Other people said they didn't eat because they were waiting for us to eat the dessert and we never did.
What's he really like as a person?
I've found he is very well briefed in meetings and he is a conviction politician. He has got very clear views. You are never left in any doubt about what he thinks. I quite like that because I'm a conviction politician so you are not left in any doubt about where I stand.
Is he a wise-cracker?
Actually it's in those interactions like the one with the press or a bigger crowd that he is a wise-cracker but in the meeting he tends to be pretty straight on to it.
Impressions of the White House?
In a small country we often feel like we are living in a goldfish bowl. We don't live in anything like the goldfish bowl the President does in the middle of Washington. He can't go on the front lawn without people seeing him.
And the Oval Office is smaller than you think.
Will New Zealand get any more favourable consideration for a free trade agreement because of the visit?
If a gap comes up - and it is sort of if, if, if, if, because for all the reasons I have outlined, there needs to be more bipartisanship on trade in Washington for anyone else to come into the frame - but if there were more bipartisanship, then I would come away believing that at the least we will be closely considered.
But more closely considered than if you had not gone to Washington?
More closely considered than if we had not embarked in the past 18 months or so on a relationship improvement process which has reached another benchmark with the success of this visit.
Was Mr Bush interested in your discussions with Speaker Pelosi?
Yes, because there has been a breakdown in bipartisanship on trade and that needs to be rebuilt. But we have a position on trade which is pretty similar to that of the Clinton Democrats which is that more trade is good.
And the way we have been able to deal with the labour and environment issues in trade agreements is something we can also hold to Democrats and say, "Look, we don't present you with any problems and by the way here's a way the US can be dealing with it if that is what your concern is. It is not about labour rates, it's about minimum conditions."
Do you think that in a perverse sense New Zealand has slightly more leverage than before?
In the current situation where the [Democrat] majority in control of Congress is raising labour and environment issues as their major concern in the FTAs that the US is doing, that also puts us in a better light.
Your speech on trade in Chicago was very critical of US protectionism in the Farm Bill. Is there a fresh frankness in the relationship as well as a friendship?
I'd be very surprised if the slightest offence were taken. They absolutely know where we are coming from and they know what has to be done to get a WTO round.
Our understanding of what's needed to crack the WTO round is that America will have to give more [in negotiations] on domestic subsidies but it shouldn't be expected to give more unless others do. One of the concerns you'll always hear expressed in both the States and the EU is that they feel that every move they make is banked by other players then no one else puts anything else on the table.
You talked about Iraq with Mr Bush and said later the UN needed to re-engage.
Their footprint has been very, very light. Even at the level of debate in the UN you've had a deafening silence.
I think that when James Baker and Lee Hamilton did that report of the Iraq Study Group [for Bush] it started a lot more thinking about what could happen. And Tony Blair gave evidence to that and he was one of many voices which was saying, "We have got to engage in a regional conversation" [around Iraq] and that's happened.
The US was at the regional conversation in Baghdad in the past couple of weeks [with Iran and Syria]. I understand [Condoleeza Rice] is going to Turkey for a regional conversation and that is starting to come through at the UN. ... So I think we are going to see more UN engagement.
Is there any role for New Zealand?
Not at the moment. It really is a question of the UN needing to be working with countries in the region.
What was the highlight of your trip?
The personal highlight was seeing that extraordinary Ngati Porou marae in the [Chicago] Field Museum.
I've never seen anything like it. That carved front was incredible.
