N.Z. reaction to threat by French Minister deplored

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32958, 3 July 1972, Page 2

N.Z. reaction to threat by French Minister deplored

(From GARY ARTHUR, London correspondent of "The Press')

LONDON, July 2.

The New Zealand Government’s apparent failure to secure a formal disclaimer from the French Government of reported threats by its Minister of Overseas Territories (Mr Pierre Messmer) was a symptom of New Zealand’s having “gone to sleep” over the Common Market issue, said Mr Enoch Powell, M.P.

Mr Powell, a fervent opponent of the Common Market, has written to the New Zealand High Commission and the French Embassy in London on the subject.

Yesterday, he said that he could not believe it when he saw a newspaper report quoting Mr Messmer as saying that if New Zealand trade union action against the French nuclear tests continued France would “cut New Zealand’s five-year guaranteed period of exports to Britain under the market entry deal." He assumed that the report could not be correct, but had been assured in a letter from the New Zealand Deputy High Commissioner in London (Mr M. Norrish) that Mr Messmer was correctly reported.

Mr Norrish had told him that Mr Messmer’s statement represented a misunderstanding of the F.O.L.’s actions and also of the Luxemburg agreement. But the French Foreign Ministry had indicated to the

newspapers, said Mr Norrish’s letter, that Mr Messmer’s statement did not reflect French Government policy. The New Zealand Government was satisfied that this was the case.

In his reply, Mr Powell said he was astonished that a French Minister, irrespective of whether he was officially said to be “reflecting French Government policy,” could publicly say that France would curtail the arrangements made for New Zealand under the Treaty of Brussels. “CURTAILMENT” “It will be noted,” Mr Powell told Mr Norrish, “that he was not referring to arrangements after the fiveyear period, but to the curtailment of the five-year period itself. I mean no discourtesy when I feel obliged to say that if Her Majesty’s New Zealand Government is ‘satisfiied’ with this, it is satisfied very easily.” Mr Powell has asked the French Embassy in London for the source of any French Foreign Ministry disclaimer, and has been told that it has no knowledge of any comment by its Ministry of Foreign Affairs concerning the statement attributed to Mr Messmer. Mr Powell raised the matter in the House of Commons last week during the debate on the sugar clause of the European Communities Bill. He quoted from his correspondence with the New Zealand High Commission and the French Embassy, and said that Mr Messmer’s remarks

showed how “cavalierly” even the precise provisions of the treaty could be regarded by the members of the Community. “We do well,” he said, “to note a statement concerning one of these transitional provisions in the treaty, that, if necessary, it will he abrogated or neglected by one of the participating countries — a statement which the country concerned confirms has actually been made and which has not been disavowed by the Government to which the Minister who made it belongs.” Mr Powell told the House that they should be chary of over-generosity in assuming that vague expressions in a protocol would be treated years ahead in the precise manner in which they had been interpreted in the White Paper of last July.

Mr Norrish is on leave from the New Zealand High Commission at present and has not been able to reply to Mr Powell’s request for the source of his statement regarding the French Foreign Ministry disclaimer. However, a High Commission spokesman said today that Mr Norrish was almost certainly referring to a New Zealand Press Association report printed in New Zealand on June 1, which quoted a French Government spokes-

man in Paris as saying that Mr Messmer’s remarks had been “misinterpreted” and “not well understood.”

Asked yesterday if there had been any formal French Government disclaimer of the remarks, Mr O. P. Gabites, the New Zealand Ambassador to Paris, said he could not say that there had been. “But I have been told by the French,” he added, “that blackmail is not one of their diplomatic tools.”