Increasing cooperation among neighbouring Western Pacific navies is the aim, reports PHILIP ENGLISH.
Representatives of 17 Western Pacific navies are in Auckland for a conference with an agenda that includes sessions on improving search and rescue operations in the region and combating piracy.
At the same time, a Canadian frigate is in port for a five-day goodwill visit. HMCS Calgary will be open to the public at Princes Wharf on Friday between 1.30 pm and 4 pm. The frigate's company will also participate in the Armistice Day ceremony at the Auckland Domain Cenotaph on Saturday.
The Royal New Zealand Navy will host the conference, the seventh Western Pacific Naval Symposium, which will be attended by Navy representatives from nations including the United States, Russia, China, Australia, Japan and South Korea.
Canada, France and India will have observers present.
A representative from the Indonesian Navy will also attend - and spark a protest and street theatre by Indonesian human rights advocates.
The New Zealand Chief of Naval Staff, Rear-Admiral Peter McHaffie, said the symposium was an apolitical regional body intended to increase cooperation among neighbouring navies. The meetings had been held for 12 years and had been "instrumental in promoting a new era of cooperation among the member navies."
The symposium will include sessions on improving combined search and rescue or humanitarian aid tasks between navies, combined responses to natural disasters and initiatives to combat increasing piracy in Asian waters. Sessions will also be held on regional cooperation, multilateral Pacific operations and opportunities for maritime peacekeeping.
The Green Party defence spokesman, Keith Locke, MP, said a representative from the Indonesian Navy should not attend the symposium because Indonesian soldiers were still arming and training militias in West Timor.
"Every day our soldiers in East Timor are risking their lives to stop the infiltration of Indonesian-trained militiamen. The Indonesian armed forces are the main barrier to that country's democratisation."
Mr Locke said New Zealand had cut bilateral military contacts with Indonesia. To be consistent, it ought to have told the Indonesian Navy representative that he was not welcome.
The Indonesia Human Rights Committee is organising a demonstration and street theatre outside the symposium venue, the Stamford Plaza, tomorrow at noon.
The street theatre will focus on the slaying of three United Nations workers in Atambua, West Timor, by militiamen on September 6.
A spokesman for the Minister of Defence, Mark Burton, said New Zealand was hosting the symposium by rotation. It faced the choice of cancelling the meeting or allowing the Indonesians to come.
"While New Zealand has frozen cooperation with Indonesia on a bilateral basis," he said, "it is still necessary to work with the country in some circumstances and this is a multilateral conference which is discussing humanitarian issues."
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