N.Z. The ‘Least Disliked’ Of Western Nations

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31339, 8 April 1967, Page 3

N.Z. The ‘Least Disliked’ Of Western Nations

(Net* Zealand Press Association)

MASTERTON, April 7. In the eyes of Africa, New Zealand was the “least disliked” of all Western nations, the New Zealand permanent representative to the United Nations and Ambassador-designate to Washington, Mr F. H. Corner, said today.

He used the term “disliked” intentionally, Mr Corner said. No Black African nation liked any Western nation. “It’s a question of degree. We are the least disliked.”

Mr Corner was on an inspection of the Waingawa freezing works of Thomas Borthwick and Sons A’sia, Ltd., yesterday. New Zealand owed

its standing, he said, to the relationship between Maori and pakeha.

The African nations were appreciative of our racial tolerance. They nodded with approval at the quite frequent inter-marriage of Maori and pakeha.

There was, too, an awareness that New Zealand was not imperialistic, said Mr Corner.

New Zealand had given independence to Western Samoa and the Cook Islands.

“This has impressed Black Africa,” he said.

Meat Trade

“We thus head the list of Western nations,” he said.

One of his main tasks in Washington when he becomes Ambassador next month will be to try to increase New Zealand’s meat exports to the United States, Mr Corner said.

He had thus been meeting Dairy Board and Meat Board members and others in the trade in the few days before he returned to the United States. U.N. Mandate The move to take away from South Africa its mandate to govern South-west Africa was almost solely at the insistence of the Afro-

Asian block, Mr Corner said. “It was done so Black Africa could get at South Africa," he said. Ah article which recently appeared In a South African newspaper alleging preparation for United States troops to invade South-west Africa and retake the territory for the United Nations was a “pretty unlikely story.” Soviet Bole South Africa disputes the right of the United Nations to relieve her of the mandate. The influence of Russia in the United Nations was at present a negative one, Mr Corner said. “That nation is now merely trying to stop anything constructive being done in the United Nations, although it would not go out of its way to quarrel with the United States.”