‘C’wealth wings torn’

Press, 3 August 1981, Page 6

‘C’wealth wings torn’

Shifting the Commonwealth Finance Ministers’ conference from Auckland in protest over the Springbok tour had been like a little boy tearing the wings of a - butterfly and then crying because it no longer flew, said the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) yesterday. He told delegates to the National Party conference at Wellington that he was unhappy with the decision, but could live with it. He accepted what he had been told by Commonwealth leaders in .London, that the decision to move the conference had been taken sadly. Those who took the deci-

sion might have been sad, he said, but they had “torn the wings from the Commonwealth.” “New Zealand is small, but has a reputation in civil rights second to none. I will .not meekly accept these insults,” he told cheering delegates. In his first press conference since returning from London, Mr Muldoon told journalists that he had no intention of putting the question of withdrawal from the Gleneagles Agreement before the “dust had settled" bn the tour issue, but that it would be done before the Commonwealth Heads-of-

Government meeting in Melbourne in September. “I think clearly that the Gleneagles Agreement has got to be recommitted in Melbourne. I don’t think there can be doubt about that," he said. He said he had met very strong support in London for his Government’s stand. “I was astonished at the number of prominent people in British political life who take a stronger line on this than even my Government,” he said. “The support the New Zealand Government's attitude has in London really is almost embarrassing,” he said.