Ministerial Statements — Iraq—New Zealand Assistance

Yesterday the Government announced decisions on further New Zealand contributions to support humanitarian and reconstruction assistance in Iraq. The Government also announced that New Zealand will continue to make a significant contribution to the fight against terrorism under Operation Enduring Freedom.

The adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1483 on 22 May cleared the way for international participation in the reconstruction of Iraq. That resolution makes it clear that the UN will play a vital role in humanitarian relief, in the reconstruction of Iraq, and in the restoration and establishment of national and local institutions for representative governance. The resolution paves the way for an internationally recognised representative Government of Iraq to be formed. The Security Council resolution urges member States to play a role in humanitarian relief, reconstruction, and rehabilitation, and welcomes contributions to stability and security. It also provides for those countries like ours, which did not participate in the war and are not occupying powers, to play a role in Iraq without acquiring the status of occupying powers. The Government has always said that New Zealand was prepared to play a role in post-conflict Iraq, but that there needed to be appropriate multilateral cover and authority. UN Security Council Resolution 1483 provides that cover and authority.

The people of Iraq have suffered greatly from decades of conflict—internal and external—from a Government that abused their human rights, and from more than a decade of economic sanctions. Against that background, the process of restoring a fully functioning society and economy in Iraq cannot be expected to be easy. It is vital that, in accordance with the terms of the UN resolution, all countries contribute what they can as quickly as they can. The New Zealand Government has already given practical support to Iraq. It has contributed $4.3 million through UN agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross. We have agreed to provide up to 15 Defence Force personnel to assist in UN mine action service operations there, and two have already been deployed. Now we will provide the New Zealand Defence Force engineering group of up to 60 personnel, including support staff, to work on reconstruction tasks in southern Iraq. The engineering group will operate with a UK unit for a period of up to 12 months, and up to three New Zealand Defence Force personnel will be based in the British headquarters to support the New Zealand presence.

We have also looked at making a civilian contribution to the reconstruction effort in Iraq. One such area is agriculture, and we have decided to contribute $1 million to rehabilitate the Iraqi agriculture ministry building in Baghdad. We will also be offering scholarships and custom-made agriculture training courses in New Zealand. Those will help to meet the needs of a generation of young Iraqis who have missed out on education in that critical sector. We are also willing to consider contributing to other civilian tasks that may arise during the period of reconstruction and the subsequent establishment of the Iraqi interim Government.

We also announced yesterday further initiatives in support of Afghanistan and Operation Enduring Freedom. A significant part of the effort will be through the deployment of a provincial reconstruction team. Such a team is not a combat unit. It provides a strengthened military-observer capacity, which also acts as the centre for the facilitation of non-governmental organisation and other civilian contributions to reconstruction. We know that a similar approach was successfully tried in the former Republic of Yugoslavia. In contributing to a provincial reconstruction team we are prepared to lead one if our capacities extend that far, and at present we have a reconnaissance team in the field that will report back shortly to us. In addition, two NCOs will be deployed to work with a British team that is providing training for the Afghan army. We also consider that to be a priority. We are leaving open the possibility of another round of deployments of the frigates in the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.

New Zealand has long been known for its willingness to provide practical support to societies that are recovering from the trauma of conflict. The assistance to Iraq and Afghanistan is given in line with that longstanding practice. In addition, the continuing support for counter-terrorism activities makes a contribution towards building a more secure world for us all.

The National Opposition supports this deployment. Our New Zealand troops will do a great job where a great job is needed. They will be practical, they will get on with the local people, they will get the job done, and they deserve the support of this Parliament in setting out into a situation that has to be regarded as potentially dangerous for them. But that will not change the view of Helen Clark and her Government as being an unreliable friend and as being a Government that was willing to get stuck into our friends and allies when it suited the Government’s domestic political purposes.

This is a significant contribution, but it is one where Helen Clark has been able to make her motives look opportunist and insincere. This is a further chapter in months of ducking and weaving as the Government tried to cultivate anti-American sentiment in New Zealand, and at the same time to build international support for Helen Clark’s own future career in the United Nations. [Interruption]

💬 Mr SPEAKER: The Prime Minister was heard in silence; so will the Leader of the Opposition be.

The Government has set out to try to repair the damage done to our national interests and our international standing by 3 months of bad judgments, misjudged pride, and comments that have been damaging to—and were taken as damaging by—our friends and allies. It started with the comments on the Al Gore presidency and culminated with Phil Goff holding hands with Arafat, just when everyone else was getting the road map on the road.

This deployment is also a U-turn on the Government’s previous policy. Government members have lectured this House on the principles involved in their foreign policy. On 25 March Helen Clark said that New Zealand would make no contribution to Iraq unless the United Nations was in control. The United Nations is not in control. These troops will be under the control of the British army, which was, to use the Government’s term, an invading force, and is now an occupying power in Iraq. So where is the principle in that? New Zealand is committing troops to the control of what the UN resolution calls the authority that is the US and the UK. The Prime Minister also said that we would offer only cash and other humanitarian aid as long as the US looked as though it was going to set up its own military bureaucracy to run Iraq, which is exactly what it has done. The language changed to “multilateral cover”, which is another “Clarkism”—one-third truth and two-thirds spin. Now we have a total back-down: the commitment of our troops under the control of the occupying armies of Britain and the US.

Finally, was there a deal? Well, when Dr Cullen raises his eyebrows that always means yes. I understand that this decision was conveyed to the US Government 2 weeks ago. The first question is this: why was the New Zealand Parliament not informed 2 weeks ago, when it could have been, instead of now? Secondly, was it the case that—[Interruption] Well, I believe it was the case. New Zealand offered troops—a significant contribution, and more than could have been expected—in return for complimentary statements from the State Department. This is the Government that was not to be pushed around. This is the Government that was not to let the US make its foreign policy, and was not to be told what to do by someone who had illegally invaded another country. Yet the Government has been virtually told what to do, and that is to make a significant contribution to post-war Iraq. The Government did have to do that, and Helen Clark went and did it.

Our position has been clear since the day that the war ended. We said that New Zealand should take part as quickly as possible in the rebuilding of Iraq. This announcement is too late. It should have been done months ago.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to welcome the Government’s announcement that it will deploy personnel into Iraq and Afghanistan to assist with the efforts in re-establishing peace and security and towards the development and well-being of the peoples of those two nations. It is said that a week is a long time in politics. I would like to suggest that a week may prove to be a lifetime in trade negotiations. Whilst we welcome these announcements—and we have said on many occasions that we concurred with the position that the Government had taken with regard to the desirability of having the United Nations involved in any action in Iraq, in terms of looking for weapons of mass destruction and of regime-change activities—we say the comments that were passed after the war was under way and difficulties became apparent were totally unnecessary. There will be another time in which we will have those debates further, and judgment will be passed for many years to come on the wisdom of those comments, but they have clearly harmed New Zealand’s position with its friends and allies.

This move will go, in part, some way towards at least reminding our friends and allies that we still exist, and that we are still able to offer a valuable contribution. But this contribution, and any gains that we get from it as a nation, will be on the backs of the men and women of our Defence Force, who show a far higher degree of professionalism than I have observed around the hustings here in the last month or so. I want to reflect on some comments that were made after the unfortunate accident that killed Major John McNutt of the Special Air Services in Kuwait. The Prime Minister herself made a comment that she did not believe that New Zealand’s foreign affairs or foreign relations were built on the activities, the assistance, the viability, or the support of the SAS. Quite clearly the Prime Minister has had a huge change of heart since those days, and she is now leaning very heavily on the SAS as a foreign affairs tool, because she has found since then that the SAS is a very, very effective foreign affairs tool and, again, one that is effective because of the professionalism and the expertise of the men and women who deploy and support those operations.

On behalf of New Zealand First I want to say—and I want the Government to reflect on this—that when the Government tells the nation that it has no plans to send people into action, it needs to reflect on the impact of those words on the personnel who are already training and preparing to go, and who have already been told they are to go into action. The response to that from within the ranks is that someone is telling porkies or not exactly telling the truth, or to ask, if that were the truth, why they are preparing and discussing the issue, and why moves are being made to ensure that their deployment is effective, swift, and professional.

New Zealand First tells those personnel that we look forward to their return home, and look forward as a nation to enjoying the fruits of their work and their professionalism. We know that they will perform absolutely impeccably in the Middle East, as they have always done in the various peacekeeping missions, be they in Israel, Lebanon, Kosovo, or wherever. We are absolutely dependent on them to do their duty impartially and with humanity.

I note once again that larger numbers of logistics personnel are going out—engineers and people skilled in planning and executing—and that the success of our forces’ ability to deliver humanitarian aid and support to the people will depend upon those personnel and their skills.

I say to the Government: thank you, well done. However, the rewards of the Government and the nation lie from here on in the hands of the men and women we deploy, and accordingly we should support them 100 percent.

I rise on behalf of the ACT party to say to our defence personnel, who are going on what is a risky mission, that they go with the support of the New Zealand Parliament and, I am sure, the vast majority of New Zealanders. The ACT party supports this deployment. I have to support it, because I wrote to the Prime Minister on 28 March stating: “This letter is to urge you to urgently reconsider your policy of refusing to assist in humanitarian aid to Iraq unless it is under United Nations control.” I am delighted to see that the Prime Minister has changed that policy. What I am not delighted to see is that she has not admitted it. I find it interesting that—

💬 Hon Member: Ah!

The Prime Minister says that was always her policy. That is interesting, because on 24 March The Dominion Post must have misunderstood. It stated: “Prime Minister Helen Clark says New Zealand’s contribution to post-war Iraq will be in cash rather than peacekeeping forces or other expertise, because the United States plans its own military bureaucracy to run Iraq in the short term”—as it is doing. The New Zealand Herald was under the same misapprehension, because it reported that the Prime Minister had ruled out contributing personnel to the United States - organised peacekeeping force operating in Iraq after the war. I see the Press made that mistake, as well. It reported the Prime Minister as saying: “New Zealand will be not taking part in rebuilding a post-war Iraq unless the effort is under the auspices of the United Nations. We are looking for the UN to be prominently engaged, and at this point the UN does not have a clear role.” It still does not have a clear role. Another newspaper reported the same comments: “New Zealand will not provide peacekeepers unless the United States hands over control to the United Nations.” I ask the Prime Minister whether that has happened.

💬 Hon Member: Yes.

Hello, somebody said yes! Who in the Labour Party was told that in his or her caucus? Government members will not own up. Mr Phil Goff was asked a question that was reported in the New Zealand Herald by Fran O’Sullivan, who must also have misunderstood what he said—

💬 Hon Phil Goff: She does it constantly.

That is interesting, because she had to put quotation marks around it. This is what she said: “Asked whether there were any circumstances in which New Zealand would take a peacekeeping role in a bridging sense if the US was there, Mr Goff replied: “In the first instance, you’ll have a direct military rule, and we won’t be offering peacekeeping forces’.’’ Mr Goff now says that he was misunderstood, as well. I think we are entitled to have the Government tell us in a ministerial statement what it is really doing. The Leader of the Opposition is absolutely right. The Government is doing it in order to have some diplomatic and trade advantage. I think the Government needs to apologise to the Australians. We all remember Helen Clark and Phil Goff saying: “We would never send over troops for trade”, but now they are doing that. This was their statement: “New Zealand’s position is strong support for multilateralism, the rule of law, and upholding the authority of the Security Council. It is a principled position.” But where is the Security Council, in terms of this Prime Minister?

💬 Rodney Hide: Where is the principle?

That is a very good question. I am delighted to see that the Government is joining the real world, but why does it not have the decency to say to Parliament that it was wrong? This House should realise that this commitment might be a very long-term one. We have had peacekeepers serving overseas, I understand, since the 1950s. If we had actually contributed to the war in Iraq, we would be able to say: “We’ve done our bit. Let someone else do it.”

I also say to the Prime Minister that we have bits of things that we should be doing ourselves. I regret that she did not include anything in her statement about the Solomons. That is an area in our sphere; that country has been asking us for help for over a decade, and I would hate to think that we cannot give it because the Prime Minister has committed all our troops to the Middle East.

Let us be clear: this announcement is not primarily about increasing our aid to Iraq; it is all about scoring more brownie points in London and Washington. We could easily have spent exactly the same amount of money on Iraqi aid and reconstruction—about $12 million worth—without putting our army people in a unit of the British occupation force. Our army people are already doing good work in the UN-run demining unit, and that could have been expanded. Kiwis are already doing good work in the Red Cross and other civilian non-governmental organisations. We could have put more resources into that area. There is no doubt that we could have become involved in several civilian engineering reconstruction projects. Bush and Blair might not have liked it if we had said, yes, we will do more to help Iraq, but we will not do anything that could be seen as legitimising the war and the current British and American occupation. The Iraqis, who increasingly hate the occupation of their land by British and American troops, would have cheered. People around the world who admired New Zealand’s anti-war stand would also have applauded.

Of course we should help the Iraqi people reconstruct their country, after the devastation caused by years of Saddam’s brutal rule, two US-led wars, and a decade of economic sanctions. However, we should not do that as part of the British occupation force—at a time when America and Britain are increasingly discredited for having launched the war on the lie that they “knew” Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Now they are doling out reconstruction and oil contracts to their own companies, and they are becoming increasingly discredited for continuing to mistreat the Iraqi people, and promoting their own puppets as the new rulers of the country. Just last Saturday, 2,000 people demonstrated in Basra against the British, demanding their withdrawal from the city. That is the very area where our Kiwi army people are likely to be based. Do we really want to see our army people being demonstrated against by the Iraqi people?

There is one thing in the announcement that we do support—the $1 million being given to repair the agricultural ministry building, and the agricultural scholarships that are being made available to Iraqis. However, we are totally against sending up to 100 soldiers to participate in the continuing dirty war in Afghanistan. Our contribution is being prettied up to make it appear that all our soldiers will be doing is helping rebuild communities. In fact, they will be part of a continuing war, which, today, is not primarily against the Taliban or al-Qaeda, but is the American troops siding with one set of warlords—those allied with the Karzai Government—against other warlords. Murderous, fundamentalist, anti-women warlords like Ishmael Khan, who runs Herat in the west, are being supported by American troops. Afghans have another term for the American-led provincial reconstruction teams the Kiwis will be joining. They call them “provincial rambo teams”.

The umbrella group of 70 non-governmental organisations working in Afghanistan has also criticised those teams, because they could put aid workers at risk. As Raphael Robillard, the head of the agency coordinating Afghanistan relief says: “The PRTs blur the lines between who is a gentle aid worker and who was a combatant collecting intelligence.” The American war in Afghanistan has been a very dirty war, with many civilians being killed in the bombing, admitted cases of suspects being tortured to death by American officers at Baghram air base, and hundreds of people shipped off to Guantanamo base and deprived of any legal and human rights. That is not something that we should continue to be involved in.

There is also a huge cost to us as a nation to fall in militarily behind the Americans and British in Iraq or Afghanistan.

United Future supports the announcements made in respect of additional deployments to Afghanistan and the deployment of personnel to Iraq, for the very simple reason that they are the right decisions to make at this time. They are right because they deal with an appalling humanitarian crisis now enveloping Iraq; they are right because they build on this country’s commitments, made in the wake of Operation Enduring Freedom being launched, to rebuilding the nation of Afghanistan; and they are right because, now that the Iraq war is over, the world has come in behind the view that every nation, regardless of the stand it took in that conflict, has a duty to ensure the peaceful reconstruction of Iraq.

I say to those personnel who will be going to Iraq and to Afghanistan that they do go with the blessing of this Parliament. They go as New Zealand forces and New Zealand personnel, not as the representative of a particular Government. This is not a political decision; this is a decision for New Zealanders, and it deserves to be seen in that light. Every day—just as recently as the weekend, for example—examples are brought to our attention of the risks that they will face. It could just as easily have been New Zealand personnel who were attacked in Kabul at the weekend, and not the German personnel. The risks we see in southern Iraq still will be the risks that our forces will face when they are there. I do not believe that anyone in this House, whatever his or her political differences, would wish to minimise the significance of the risk and the courage that those people will be required to display, and therefore give them their best wishes for the deployment and the mission they are about to undertake in each instance.

I observe with some wry amusement the various reactions to this announcement. The reaction of the speaker who preceded me was utterly predictable, and I will give him the charity of no further comment. But I find that those who now say that in attempting to send personnel to Iraq in particular, New Zealand is somehow currying favour with traditional friends and allies, when those same people a few weeks ago were saying that we should be working alongside those same friends and allies in the conflict, is an irony a little too great to bear. The bottom line—and I support this absolutely—is that we should have been making this assistance available right from the conclusion of the war. I am delighted that it has now happened, but the reality of those who now say that we are just currying favour—those who said at the time the decision was made to stand aside from the conflict, that we should be in there alongside our friends and allies—I think detracts from the sanctity of the decision that has been made.

💬 Hon Richard Prebble: It’s politics.

Oh! “It’s politics.”, says the member opposite. This is actually about the country’s national interest. It is a much bigger decision than the interests of some political parties. These forces and personnel have a right to go abroad, confident that they represent the goodwill of all New Zealanders. That is what this Parliament is expressing, and that is why I am pleased to support the announcement that was made yesterday.

Members of New Zealand’s military forces who are going to Iraq and Afghanistan go with the goodwill of all members of this coalition Government, and, I am sure, with the good wishes of the majority of all members of the House.

When Keith Locke accused the Government of being sycophantic to our friends and allies National Party members laughed at him, but those members actually said exactly the same thing. So I was laughing when they said that. I do not know what there is about United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483 that National, ACT, and New Zealand First, or the Greens for that matter, do not understand, and I wish sometimes that the facts would not get in the way of somebody’s prejudice.

The Security Council resolution states: “noting that other States that are not occupying powers are working now, or in the future, may work under the authority.” That is what the United Nations Security Council notes. Then it welcomes further, “the willingness of member States to contribute to stability and security in Iraq by contributing personnel, equipment, and other resources under the authority.” That is exactly what this Government is doing right now. Is there any member in this House who says that we should act against the United Nations Security Council resolution? We are a small nation dependent on the rule of law in the international community that the United Nations upholds, and that as a foundation member of the United Nations we also should uphold.

The United Nations Security Council resolution goes further, I say to Mr Locke, and appeals to member States that are in a position to do so to respond immediately to the humanitarian appeals of the United Nations and other international organisations for Iraq, and to help meet the humanitarian and other needs of the Iraqi people by providing food, medical supplies, and the resources necessary for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Iraq’s economic infrastructure. Is there anything about that that any member does not understand? That is an appeal from the United Nations Security Council. The Prime Minister and other members of this Government said that when the United Nations appeals to anyone to do something, and gives a mandate to do it, which is what Resolution 1483 does, then this country will respond, and it has.

On the one hand, it is the height of hypocrisy for members opposite to accuse this Government of sycophantically crawling up to our allies, yet when the United Nations Security Council calls for us to take action, and we do, we get the same accusations of sycophancy. I say to those people who are urging us to go into battle in Iraq, in order to appease our allies, that they are the ones who are acting sycophantically. This Government was acting in principle, and still is, under the United Nations mandate. We are proud of what we have done, and we are proud of what our people will do in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

One thing that everyone in the House will agree with is wishing those who are going offshore to both Iraq and Afghanistan, and to Operation Enduring Freedom and other theatres, all the best. As the leader of United Future said, they go in the name of New Zealand and, we hope, with the good wishes of this House.

I thank those who rose to the occasion and commented constructively about the deployments. I also acknowledge the bitter disappointment of the Opposition that it has actually happened. However, this Government has always insisted on a proper authority for being in other people’s countries, and that is why UN Resolution 1483 is so critical. That resolution, which New Zealand lobbied and advocated for, is a good resolution. It provides a very sound legal basis for those deployments, and we did not move until we had that sound legal foundation.

Also, we were very keen to see, as were Canada, Norway, the Netherlands, and a lot of other countries that we worked with on this issue, that those who came in to help at this point were not seen as occupying powers but could work with those who were, in a practical way, to make it better. That is what New Zealand excels at. It is going in, in a practical way, at the end of the conflict to bring some support to people who are in difficulty. We will do that, and I know that the New Zealanders going offshore will do it with distinction.