N.Z. criticised in U.N. resolution

Press, 19 December 1981, Page 1

N.Z. criticised in U.N. resolution

NZPA staff correspondent

Washington

New Zealand yesterday voted against a United Nations resolution condemning the Government for allowing the Springbok tour to proceed. The resolution also criticised the United States Government for allowing the Springboks to tour the United States, after New Zealand but commended organisations and individuals in Ireland, the United States, and New Zealand “that have effectively demonstrated their opposition to exchanges with South African rugby teams.”

New Zealand’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Mr H. H. Francis, said in the United Nations’ General Assembly in New York that New Zealand in the past had voted in favour of a similar resolution, aimed at an academic, cultural, and sports boycott of South Africa, but that it could not accept the allegations against New Zealand, which were “at variance with the facts.”

New Zealand voted against three other resolutions on South Africa, voted in favour of six, and abstained on five, one of which also contained a criticism of the Government on the Springbok tour. It co-sponsored, as it has done in the past, a resolution calling for a ban on investment in South Africa, because, said Mr Francis, “we believe it offers a practic-

able way of bringing pressure to bear on that country, peacefully and effectively.”

Of the resolution criticising New Zealand and the United States, Mr Francis said that singling out two countries for special mention was “selective and discriminatory. I would remind all delegations that the freedom of sports bodies to invite overseas sportsmen to New Zealand and, in the case of the New Zealand Rugby Union, to display deplorable judgment in doing so was matched by the .freedom of New Zealanders to demonstrate against that folly and against apartheid. “In doing so they upheld the purposes of this resolution, to far greater effect thari-an unwarranted expression’of disapproval of the Government, which defended their right to demonstrate, will ever do.” Mr Francis said that New Zealand, had willingly accepted a commitment to work with the international community to put an end to the apartheid system, in part because apartheid attacked “the standards, principles, and values upon which our own society is based.” But he urged a peaceful solution and said that some of the resolutions before the General Assembly implied that other countries should be prepared to set aside some of their own principles and standards to overcome apartheid. New Zealand was not prepared to do that and

did not endorse the unqualified support some texts gave to the concept of armed struggle. New Zealand would vote against a resolution on the situation within South Africa, one calling for comprehensive and mandatory sanctions, and one on relations between South Africa and Israel. It would abstain on a resolution calling for an oil embargo against South Africa and one suggesting an “international year for the mobilisation of sanctions,” not because New Zealand was opposed to the imposition of selective sanctions but because it believed that this was the wrong way to go about it.

New Zealand abstained on a resolution calling for an international conference of trade unions on sanctions against South Africa and on one which Mr Francis said implied support for government interference in the news media. It abstained on a resolution endorsing a report of the United Nations special committee against apartheid because of the allegation in the report that the New Zealand Government had failed to take action within its power to stop the Springbok tour and that the Government also had “constantly attacked” the anti-apartheid movement.

New Zealand voted in favour of a resolution comdemning South African aggression against Angola and other African countries “because we deplore South Africa’s use of force against her neighbours in persistent violation of the principles of the charter and the basic norms of international behaviour.” New Zealand believed, however, that not even South Africa should be condemned before evidence established the facts beyond reasonable doubt. New Zealand also voted in

favour of an arms embargo, in favour of a resolution on political prisoners, in favour of another on women and

children under apartheid, and in favour of one supporting the United Nations Trust Fund for South Africa. The resolution on academic, cultural, and sports boycotts was passed, 124-5. Voting against the resolution with New Zealand, were Portugal, West Germany, the United StST®rW-Britain, Fourteen countries abstained, including Australia; Ireland voted in favour. The other resolutions were all passed by varying margins.