Newztel News: RNZ "Morning Report" 8-9 am Thursday 4 October 2001 (A)
Presenter (Claire Sziranyi): The Green Party says it wants more information before it will back the use of New Zealand troops in the campaign against terrorism. The Greens were the only party in parliament yesterday opposing making SAS troops available as part of an international coalition to combat terrorism in the wake of the attacks on the USA. During a heated debate the New Zealand First leader, Winston Peters, accused the Greens of being "pinkos" and their position as being worse than communism.
Winston Peters (New Zealand First Leader): You would have thought Mr Speaker that in this parliament in a civilised world like in every other parliament, this issue would have transcended petty party politics; but not here. And not after that last speech from the Greens. In fact the communists of this world who still remain have been more adamant against Mr Terrorism than Mr Locke, the finance, the foreign affairs spokesman, and … (unclear) defence … spokesman for the Green Party.
Presenter: Earlier the Prime Minister, Helen Clark, told Morning Report that New Zealand had received a briefing on the intelligence information linking Osama bin Laden to the September 11th terror attacks and she condemned the lack of unity by the Green Party over New Zealand's involvement in a military response.
Helen Clark (Prime Minister): I think it would have been best if the entire parliament had supported the motion. Unfortunately, that didn't happen.
Presenter: Do you think that the greens could perhaps have been persuaded had they been party to the briefing from the us embassy?
Clark: No, I don't think so. I don't think it's in their nature to want to participate in this kind of effort.
Presenter: Well, to explain why the Greens are not in favour of committing the SAS to the international campaign, we're joined now by the party's co-leader, Rod Donald. Good morning.
Rod Donald (Green Party Co-Leader): Good morning Claire.
Presenter: What would it take for the green party to support such action?
Donald: Well it certainly would have taken other parties to support the amendment we put up to the motion. We said that it should be in accordance with international law with the objective of apprehending terrorists and bringing them to trial, not for revenge or retaliation. Now only the alliance voted for that amendment. That's very disturbing to us, because basically that means the other parties are saying revenge and retaliation are acceptable and that they don't really have the focus on upholding international law. The other concern with in terms of amendments to the motion yesterday was that the other parties agreed to an amendment that said we totally support the approach taken by the United States to date. Now quite frankly that means endorsing Bush turning the tragedy into a wild west comic book story with his you know talk about "wanted dead or alive", which…
Presenter: So, as far as you're concerned the information, the briefing that the Prime Minister received from the US embassy yesterday, which she says has satisfied her that there is a link between bin Laden and the attacks; do you accept that?
Donald: We will accept that she's briefed to her satisfaction and if that is the case, then we would accept New Zealand playing a military role, but only if it is according to international law and only if the objective is to actually bring these people to justice, rather than to go and take them out.
Presenter: Well, I mean apart from the "wanted dead or alive" comments, the US has said that they intend to bring bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network to justice. Isn't that enough for you?
Donald: Not quite, because the other key factor is that anything should be under united nations auspices, rather than American command. America has an appalling track record in these circumstances and let's face it bin Laden's only where he is because the Americans trained him, financed him and equipped him. So, we're saying by all means under UN auspices, by all means if it's to bring the man to justice; not to take him out. By all means if we've got the evidence which Clark says she has got and by all means we would then say if we can't achieve the right outcome through political, diplomatic and economic pressures, then ultimately we would support a military involvement.
Presenter: Do you think that you run the risk of appearing to be not in favour of this united approach against terrorism by your stance?
Donald: We do run the risk, but quite frankly we've got to look to our principles and to our self-respect. We know that Alliance MPs and a number of Labour MPs aren't happy with what's happened. They think along the same lines as us. We were the ones who had the courage of our convictions. We know that a lot of people out there in the community support what we're doing. We know that people in Green Parties in other countries support what we're doing. In the United States I mean the Green Party over there said the best way to convert people to terrorism is to drop bombs on their families and that's one of our biggest worries that this is only going to escalate what's happened. The Irish Green Party have also countenanced against taking military action because you know they pointed to their own experience and said defeating suicide terrorists using traditional military means is virtually impossible. Any ill-chosen act of revenge could spawn many more martyrs and make the situation much, much worse. Those are the concerns that we have to weigh up and it's not an easy decision to make. We could have gone with the flow, but quite frankly we think that would have been the wrong decision to make.
Presenter: You must admit though that considering the propensity of the United States to just let rip and drop bombs, that in fact this has been a relatively restrained approach so far and that the approach seems to be, as Tony Blair has said, as Bush has said, as a number have said, that it's going to be a targeted approach trying to minimise the effect on the civilian population in Afghanistan, who everyone knows has been through hell over the past decades.
Donald: Indeed they have been and the Taleban is a corrupt and despicable regime, but Bush is still basically saying you're either with us or against us and Tony Blair is basically saying if the Taleban don't do what they're told, they're going to be taken out. And that's not really the right approach. Economic sanctions and political sanctions have worked. They have also… you know they've brought people like Slobodan Milosevic to trial. We want the Americans to actually sign up to the international criminal court. They're refusing to do that. We want the Americans to stop the exports of small arms, because after all you can only kill people if you've got the weapons in the first place and I'm afraid Western European countries are the homes of the manufacturing plants for the guns and bombs that people are using.
Presenter: Ultimately though can't you be accused of being woolly woofters sitting on the fence unwilling to take a stance on this? I mean people in the world are saying, enough, we want to stop terrorism and here we have the Green Party saying well possibly under these circumstances. I mean don't you run a risk of alienating people here?
Donald: we're taking a very strong stance on this. We're saying let's learn from the lessons of history. Let's not repeat what happened in Iraq. Let's remember what the Americans did in places like Nicaragua, let's go for every possible peaceful alternative before we invoke a military response.
Presenter: Rod Donald, thank you very much for joining us.
ENDS
