Aust.-N.Z. go ahead with naval exercise

Press, 7 February 1985, Page 2

Aust.-N.Z. go ahead with naval exercise

By

REG GRATTON

of Reuters through NZPA

Sydney Australia and New Zealand have moved to ease tension in the crisis facing the A.N.Z.U.S. alliance by going ahead with a joint naval exercise originally planned as a curtain-raiser to cancelled “war games” with the United States.

The Defence Department in Canberra said yesterday that the New Zealand frigate Canterbury would join Australian vessels in the exercise next week.

It will be the first significant contact between the Armed Forces of the two neighbours — longtime comrades-in-arms — since New Zealand’s ban on a visit by a United States warship capable of carrying nuclear weapons triggered a crisis in the 34-year A.N.Z.U.S. defence pact linking them and the United States. The ban led the United States to withdraw from the Sea Eagle exercise next month and is also opposed by Australia.

The Australian news media, meanwhile, suggested that A.N.Z.U.S. faces fresh problems by reporting that Australia is to tell the United States it would withdraw support for the monitoring of MX nuclear missile tests planned for the South Pacific.

Correspondents travelling with the Australian Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, said he would tell President Reagan in Washington today that his Government had reversed an earlier agreement to provide logistic support for the tests. Senior officials in Canberra could not confirm the reports but Mr Hawke has been under a barrage of criticism over the tests from all factions of his Labour Party. Australia is important to the United States as a defence ally not only through its strategic importance and size of its military but also as host to three American monitoring stations. The Reagan Administration, meanwhile, expressed “grave concern” about Wellington’s ban on nuclear-

powered and nuelear-armed vessels and the White House hinted that Washington was studying possible retaliatory action.

“This is a matter of grave concern that goes to the core of our mutual obligations as allies,” said the White House spokesman, Larry Speakes. “Accordingly, we are considering the implications of our over-all co-operation with New Zealand and Australia.” Other American officials said Australia supported the American reaction and joint American-Australian naval manoeuvres were likely to be scheduled instead. An Australian defence spokesman told Reuters that next week’s exercise was “very much a matter of routine.”

“We don’t see any relationship between this and Sea Eagle,” he said.

Australia and New Zealand both said they would investigate defence cooperation outside A.N.Z.U.S. The crisis was given blanket coverage by Australian newspapers yester-

day. The “Australian” said in a front-page editorial that Australia was “now facing one of the most serious crises in its recent political history.” If A.N.Z.U.S. were destroyed “the real victors will be the Soviet Union and ...

all of those whose goal is the defeat of the Western democracies.”

This view was echoed by the former Prime Minister, Mr Malcolm Fraser, writing in the “Sydney Morning Herald.”

But Mr Fraser, whose Conservative Government held power from 1975 to 1983, criticised the United States for forcing the issue of New Zealand’s “nonukes” policy. Australia should try to ensure that New Zealand was not pushed into a corner, but the United States appeared to be following a policy of confrontation, not consensus, he said.

The United States yesterday refused to say if a visit to Hawaii by Parliament’s select committee on defence was still on.