Peters to visit East Timor 'when situation settles'

Foreign Minister Winston Peters will visit East Timor when it has settled more, Prime Minister Helen Clark said yesterday.

The Herald understands that Mr Peters had been scheduled to visit the strife-torn country in the next week or two and was to have been the first New Zealand minister there since New Zealand sent troops to Dili.

He was to have made the trip after returning from leading a 50-strong delegation last week to Vanuatu and the Cook Islands.

The delegation included MPs, business people, non-government organisations and dignitaries including Tuwharetoa paramount chief Tumu te Heuheu.

Instead, Defence Minister Phil Goff last week made a detour to East Timor on his way back from a defence meeting in Singapore.

Helen Clark said yesterday that she expected Mr Peters would still make the trip to East Timor but he had always planned to wait for the situation to settle first.

He had indicated that was probably several weeks away.

Mr Peters said he thought it would be in the interests of New Zealand soldiers to get on with restoring peace in East Timor than to have them looking after him.

"I don't see why I should pull 40 or 50 soldiers off their job to look after me when I can take advice from my high commissioner there, my officials there, the best staff they've got in terms of intelligence there, rather than me turn up and get in their way.

"I'll go there the moment I think they can do that job without any impediment to the enforcement of peace in that country."

Mr Peters, the New Zealand First leader and a minister outside the Cabinet, took issue with a Herald editorial that referred to him heading towards the sun in the Cook Islands while Mr Goff went to Dili.

Mr Peters said the Herald had been running a "vindictive" campaign against him and that the Pacific was "critically important" to New Zealand.

Helen Clark said Mr Peters and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade would judge when the time was right for him to go.

She said she had not yet seen the report of the New Zealand police who were sent to Dili last week to assess the possibility of boosting police numbers there.

Decisions also had to be made about whether the police would do a policing job there or help to rebuild the Timor police force.