Games rules change?

Press, 21 May 1982, Page 4

Games rules change?

NZPA staff correspondent London

The Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) last evening raised the possibility of getting a Commonwealth ’ meeting called to agree on the correct meaning of the Gleneagles Agreement. This might be necessary if the Commonwealth Games rules were redrafted to allow a majority of members to keep New Zealand out because of their interpretation of Gleneagles, he told a news conference in London. Mr Muldoon said he had expressed some concern about the redrafting of the rules to the Games federation president, Sir Alexander Ross, when they met at a dinner given by the British Prime Minister (Mrs Thatcher). He had expressed concern that the rules might be rewritten in such a way as to “permit a majority who put

their own interpretation on Gleneagles, and an incorrect one, to exclude, say, New Zealand.” “If this is done I think it very likely we would have to have some kind of a meeting and agree on just what was the correct meaning of the Gleneagles Agreement,” he said. “Britain and New Zealand take one view. Most of the Commonwealth take a different view; one or two fall somewhere in between. “We couldn’t have anything with the Commonwealth Games rules which were based on a Gleneagles Agreement, the parties to which differed as to interpretation. “I don’t think you could have a Commonwealth Games without New Zealand or the other members of what we term the old Commonwealth. It would be a pretty funny sort of thing, wouldn’t it?”