U.S. warnings bluster—P.M.

Press, 7 February 1985, Page 1

U.S. warnings bluster—P.M.

PA Wellington American threats that New Zealand would be made to pay dearly for its nuclear ship ban were dismissed last evening by the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, as bluster.

He warned that any effort by the United States to coerce his Government into accepting nuclear-capable ships would only strengthen the resolve of New Zealanders opposed to nuclear weapons. “I think that these steps taken in the United States will produce in New Zealanders a conviction that we have the right democratically to determine that we will not be a nuclear-armed country and that we will not have nuclear arms in this country,” Mr Lange said before the Wellington reception to mark Waitangi Day. “The policy of this Government will continue — there will be a standing invitation to the United States to send a vessel to New Zealand which conforms to our policy and there will not be in New Zealand nuclear-armed vessels,” he said.

Asked how he reacted to reports that the American Secretary of Defence, Mr Caspar Weinberger, had said that New Zealanders were following a course that could do great harm to themselves and that he hoped they would change it, Mr Lange said he interpreted it as a “straightforward threat.” It was a “most unfortunate expression” from a super-Power to a small country, numerically, which had elected to make its democratic decision.

Mr Lange said that New Zealand had a conviction that democracy was an appropriate political system and that small nations had the right to determine their destiny and to share convictions with the larger ones, to see that human values were honoured, that human rights were observed, and that the State did not dictate every aspect of its citizens’ lives.

“How more repugnant could it be if the State that dictated the way in which people thought and acted was not even the home State, if it was another country using either the lan-

guage of threat or the threat itself,” Mr Lange said. The Americans were adopting the blustering attitude he had expected, and none of yesterday’s developments in Washington had been a big surprise. A Republican senator chairing a sub-committee of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, Senator William Cohen, yesterday urged President Reagan to cut New Zealand out of its military activities and take economic sanctions against the country. But Mr Lange said it appeared this move would not be put to the test of a vote in the Senate and that American bills on casein imports, and the 'benefits to New Zealand from the trade injury test under G.A.T.T. — a particular target of Senator Cohen — were just part of the normal routine of dealing with a main trading partner. The real issue was a simple one, he said. “If we hold certain values — and one of them is democracy — we yield to what people wish, because ultimately that is the right way to view how societies should dictate their futures. “In New Zealand, the people have spoken, and it is not for the United States, or for the Soviet Union, or any other major Power to say that they don’t accept that democratic decision,” he said.

Mr Lange said it would be completely contrary to the tradition and history of the United States to use the force of economic sanction, or the threats which it seemed to be making, to deny to the people of a democracy the right to determine a future without nuclear weapons. Mr Lange said he would not make any official response to Washington over the American threats. He was confident that the United States would not use trade sanctions as a means of retaliation.

The prospect of American trade sanctions against New Zealand loomed larger yesterday as the United States stepped up menacing but still undefined threats.

Spokesmen hinted, but did not specify, that retaliation against New Zealand could spread into areas outside military co-operation.

Further reports, pages 2, 8 and 12