Govt details Tass’s ‘misrepresentation’

Press, 14 March 1985, Page 34

Govt details Tass’s ‘misrepresentation’

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

Five separate reports by the Russian news agency Tass led the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, to call the Russian Ambassador to his office on February 22 and rebuke him. The dates and details of the five reports have now been published by the Acting Prime Minister, Mr Palmer. Mr Lange had said at the time that Tass “had misrepresented New Zealand’s position in the A.N.Z.U.S. and nuclear ships row.” Mr Palmer said Mr Lange’s criticism of Tass reports related to the nature of Tass reporting about the New ZealandUnited States relationship over many months and “the distorted picture of this relationship” the reports had built up.

Tass had used the New Zealand ban on port visits by nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed ships to foster its anti-American propaganda, he said. It had not, however, made any mention of the Government’s clear and firm pronouncements that New Zealand intended to remain in A.N.Z.U.S. and that the Government’s policy wffi* anti-

nuclear and not anti-Ameri-can.

Mr Palmer gave five examples of Tass reports from July, 1984, to February, 1985.

July 18, 1984: “As has already been reported, Washington used open pressure tactics already in the course of the last election campaign in New Zealand, trying to complicate the advent to power of the Labour Party. Thus in a bid to weaken the positions of the new Government to the maximum, American banks have organised a ‘leak’ of capital from New Zealand to the United States and Australia which has exacerbated the already difficult situation in its financial and economic situation. In these conditions, it was announced in Wellington today that the New Zealand dollar has been devalued by 20 per cent.”

July 18, 1984: “Washington is seriously worried by the changed political situation in New Zealand, V. Tarasov said in the newspaper Izvestia today ... but in Washington, V. Tarasov said, they hope in the long run to quash the New Zealanders' resistance as they crushed the resistance of the Australian Labourites in 1982.”

February 5, 1985: “The

statement (by a spokesman for the United States State Department) marked the culmination of the vicious anti-New Zealand campaign which has been mounted by the Reagan Administration of late in retaliation against Wellington’s decision to prohibit American warships with nuclear weapons aboard to visit the country’s ports.” February 6,1985: “What is New Zealand’s ‘guilt’ as the Americans see it? They do not want to take part in Washington’s nuclear ventures and in the baleful actions that the American Administration undertakes to draw ever new countries of the Pacific region into its militaristic strategy.” February 6, 1985: “... here Washington displayed in public its idea of respect for the rights of other peoples. First an attempt was made to persuade Prime Minister David Lange ‘peacefully,’ yet when this has failed to produce the desired effect, they in Washington began pounding the fist on the table and then threatened to use even more effective methods of pressure. The White House has declared, in particular, its intention to deny New Zealand the status of the mostftfavoured nation as

regards that country’s staple items — mutton and wool — exported to the United States. They in Washington realise that this is a blow not so much to the Labour Government in Wellington as to interests of tens of thousands of farmers in that country, to New Zealand’s economy as a whole, but this does not at all trouble the defenders of the rights of nations in Washington, who got used to reckoning only with their own interests, above all, with the interests of the United Sates militarists.” Mr Palmer said a further cause for concern had been the reporting from the New Zealand Ambassador in Moscow of almost daily items on Soviet television and press articles “couched in strident language and designed to secure the maximum in anti-United States propaganda.”