'Scaremongering’ criticised
PA Timaru News media "scaremongering” over the A.N.Z.U.S. row was criticised yesterday by the Prime Minister’s special advisor on foreign affairs, Mr Chris Laidlaw. “I have been disappointed at the way the media have presented the issue,” he said. Mr Laidlaw was speaking to members of the Canterbury branches of the Royal Overseas League and the Victoria League at a combined Commonwealth Day meeting yesterday. “There has been a lot of scaremongering — claims
that New Zealand will be defenceless, be in trouble with the rest of the world, and a lot of alarmist talk that we will be at risk,” he said. “There have been all sorts of claims that the United States will cut us adrift so that we will float out over the Pacific into a nuclear-free sunset. “The A.N.Z.U.S. Alliance is a defence pact and it goes no further than that. It obligates each of the three countries to commit itself to help either of the other two put at risk. It has nothing to do with nuclear deterrents.” The Prime Minister, Mr
Lange, had said that New Zealand did not buy into A.N.Z.U.S. because of the nuclear threat and it was not going to buy into it now. “It’s important for New Zealanders to see exactly what the Government is trying to do here,” Mr Laidlaw said. “The Prime Minister has taken great pains to go abroad to explain what A.N.Z.U.S. means to New Zealand and to the other two parties. “The feedback has been quite remarkable. We have been told by American and European editors and proprietors that the views coming back were not quite
what they seemed. “There is a huge groundswell of opinion behind New Zealand’s stance. “There was understanding about one country being prepared to stand up and say that it did not want a nuclear war, and being able to say with conviction that it did not need nuclear weapons.” Mr Laidlaw said there was no way there could be a small nuclear war. The two super-Powers were now primed to such a dangerous level that if a nuclear war started, the world would end. No country could be secure.
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Press, 12 March 1985, Page 8
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361'Scaremongering’ criticised Press, 12 March 1985, Page 8
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