Identification ‘enhanced’

Press, 6 December 1985, Page 1

Identification ‘enhanced’

By

PATRICIA HERBERT

in Wellington The Prime Minister, Mr Lange, revealed yesterday that New Zealand’s ability to determine if a craft is nuclear-armed has been enhanced since the ill-fated U.S.S. Buchanan assessment in February. That visit had to be rejected under the Government’s port policy because Defence ana Intelligence staff were unable to guarantee that the ship would not have nuclear weapons on board. The rejection raised the temperature of the A.N.Z.U.S. dispute and provoked the United States into a series of reprisals against New Zealand, all of which are still in force.

On New Zealand’s part the catch-cry became “If in doubt, leave it out,” which, at least while memories of the Buchanan were still

fresh, was generally taken to mean that the ban on nuclear armaments and propulsion must of necessity be extended to include nuclear capability. It was a position which the hard-liners in the Labour Party were keen to see adopted but which Mr Lange later retreated from. The confusion, however, remains and resurfaced on Wednesday after the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Palmer, gave a television interview in Canberra in which he said nuclear-capable vessels would be admitted provided the Government was confident they were not carrying nuclear arms “on that occasion.” V

This was greeted and reported by the Australian news media as something of a back-down and Mr Lange was yesterday bombarded with questions on the matter.

He gave an assurance that there had been no shift, an assurance that was readily accepted, but then the questioning moved to the next issue whether in fact the. need for certainty was tantamount to a ban on any craft known to have nuclear capability. It was in the course of this, that he disclosed that the Government could now judge better than it had been able to at the beginning of the year whether a nuclear-capable vessel.was nuclear-armed. , There had been a change in “the availability of the technique,” he said but refused to elaborate even to the extent of specifying whether the improvement was in equipment or documentation on the grounds that to do so would -be “completely irresponsible.” To page 3