U.S. official gives warning against N-Ban law

Press, 2 August 1985, Page 12

U.S. official gives warning against N-Ban law

NZPA staff correspondent Hugh Nevilf Washington The United States would regard any move to legislate a nuclear ban as “a signal that the New Zealand Government ... is merely looking for means of perpetuating the cause of our difficulties,” said the Undersecretary of State, Mr Michael Armacost. Mr Armacost, speaking on a radio link with Australian journalists, warned that “if that became apparent then we would have to take a more fundamental look at the defence commitment we have with New Zealand that underlies the (A.N.Z.U.S.) alliance itself.” That meant, he said, that the United States would have to take another look at whether there was any basis for retaining the alliance. “What we have done . . . has been to keep the structure intact and let the dust settle and hope that we can find a solution ... We will hope that ... the New Zealand Government will seek to find some basis on which normal port access can be resumed.” Asked the minimum New Zealand would need to do “to come back into the alliance,” Mr Armacost said. “We would obviously need a set of procedures under which we could make port calls in New Zealand without breaching our policy of neither confirming

nor denying whether nuclear armaments are aboard our ships.” Pressed on whether the United States was considering a formal bilateral alliance with Australia to replace A.N.Z.U.S. if New Zealand introduced anti-nuclear legislation, Mr Armacost

refused to define the precise terms under which cooperation with Australia would continue. He said that there might be some way the “legal eagles” in the two Governments could transmute a trilateral alliance into a bilateral one.