Where the fishing talks might have gone wrong

Press, 19 August 1978, Page 14

Where the fishing talks might have gone wrong

By

STUART McMILLAN

of “The Press’’

The versions of what went wrong in the fishing agreement with Japan are multi® plying. On the surf e it appeared that the Prime Minister iMr Muldoon) wanted a more definite statement about access to the Japanese market for New Zealand agricultural produce than the negotiators had included. Y ' the question of access to the Japanese market was supposed to have been settled when the Japanese Minister of agriculture and Fisheries (Mr Ichiro Nakagawa) was in New Zealand at the beginning of July. It was on the basis of this agreement that New Zealand agreed to talk about access to the fishing zone for Japanese fishermen. Doubts linger about the value of what was agreed. New Zealand probably gained only a few minor tariff cuts, a position of a most-favoured nation as a supplier of dairy products, which the Japanese rarely want, and nothing else. But there seemed no doubt that an agreement was reached. Then the fishing talks began later in July They appeared to be tough, but by August 5 "The Press” reported that »he agreement had been settled, and. af'er some more typing, texts were to be initialled A few davs la’er M Muldoon rejected the text because of the wording. So what happened? A likely version of the events is this: Mr Nobuhiko Ushiba. the Japanese Minister for External Economic Affairs, rame to New Zealand early in August to tell New Zealand about the economic •••■•***»> ip Rnnru

But Mr Ushiba landed in a situation in which Japan was a hot topic. In interviews he was asked not to dispense his knowledge about w’hat had happened in Bonn, but about what was happening between New Zealand and Japan

He appeared to be unaware of the sensitivity of the subject and gave a series of replies which might well have expressed his personal opinion, and even the Japanese view as he understood it. but not what he would have been told to say had he been properly briefed. As it was, his words provided excellent ammunition for those who wanted ammunition. It seems likely that not only was he promptly, made aware of the import of what he had been saying, but that he probably said that he was sorry for what he had done. Political or diplomatic sorrow of this kind is rarely conveyed in public. To retract publicly would have been a considerable loss of face. When he came to reject the agreement. Mr Muldoon described the comments made bv Mr Ushiba as unfortunate He also said that there were differences in the private and public utterances by Japan. But if Mr Ushiba, who after all does not have the ranking of Mr Nakagaw’a, had showed himself renentant, why did Mr Muldoon still reject the agreement? The timing is important here The week in which Mr Muldoon rejected the agreement was the week in which he suffered influenza. It was also, incidentally, the week 1" ’chich some of the strong-

est attacks on the Government’s dealing with Japan were made by the Opposition.

But his illness may well have stopped the Prime Minister from hearing about any apology made by Mr Ushiba. The plausibility or otherwise of this version of what went wrong with the fishing talks does not bear on the question of whether the talks will succeed or not. The latest reports suggest they they will. That is a cheerful thought. One of the results of failure would be a whole literature comprising the versions of what went wrong.