Chile traders lambasted

Press, 20 August 1983, Page 27

Chile traders lambasted

PA Wellington The savage suppression of political dissent in Chile has been met with a deafening silence by the New Zealanders who want closer trade links with the country, Ms Helen Clark (Lab., Mt Albert) has said. She said that during the last year leading businessmen had beaten a track to Chile seeking trade deals. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Cooper, had said he wanted closer trade links, said Ms Clark.

“Where are all these friends of Chile now that once again Chileans are being shot down in cold blood on the orders of the Pinochet Government?” she said. It was time for Mr Cooper and others who had been vocal in support of closer links to express publicly their abhorrence of the recent political murders in Chile, she said.

The chairman of the Chile-New Zealand Business Council, Mr Ken Forsyth, said that if the Federation of Labour reimposed its ban on trade with Chile, it would jeopardise trading relations which were being re-estab-lished and place employment opportunities at risk. The president of the F.0.L., Mr W. J. Knox, has said that the ban, lifted last October, might be reimposed if a recommendation to that effect is made by the International Confederation

of Free Trade Unions because of alleged harassment of Chilean union officials. Mr Forsyth said that any suggestion that restrictions were to be imposed again would severely affect the commercial credibility of companies seeking to develop bilateral trade with Chile.