Mr Lange comments on Aust, stance

Press, 7 February 1985, Page 8

Mr Lange comments on Aust, stance

PA Wellington The Prime Minister, Mr Lange, gave his Australian counterpart a bit of a serve last evening over Mr Hawke’s troubles with the MX missile. To be consistent the Australian Government would have to go ahead with its plan to provide logistic support for American ballistic missile testing, said Mr Lange.

It was a matter for speculation as to whether Mr Hawke’s stand to assist the United States on MX missile testing would be as strong as a few days ago, he said.

Mr Hawke, who is now having talks in Washington, is reportedly backing off from an earlier assurance

given to the United States that Australia would assist in the MX missile tests into the Tasman.

Mr Lange said it would be logical for the Australians to go ahead and support the United States.

At the height of New Zealand’s consideration of the United States’ application for the visit of a nuclear-capable warship, Mr Hawke wrote Mr Lange a well publicised letter on the implications that any ship ban would have for A.N.Z.U.S., and backed the United States’ stance.

Mr Lange said last evening that if a country in a pact said that it was necessary to have an involvement with all the technical aspects of defence and that the nuclear deterrent was fundamental to the security relationship, it would be surprising if the MX missile monitoring was cancelled.

“I don’t know if the Australians will go ahead with it but there is only one consistent answer as to the Australian position,” he said.

“That consistent answer, given the logic of their commitment to the nuclear deterrent, would be that it would co-operate with that programme. “The New Zealand Government says that we have for the last third of a century had a relationship within A.N.Z.U.S. which reflects our conventional defence position and we are not going to embrace the

nuclear aspect of security. "Australia has embraced the nuclear aspect of security and I would imagine that the United States would feel that it would be a logical extension of that to have an MX missile monitoring programme,” he said.