Israeli envoy ordered home to explain racist remarks

CANBERRA - Israel's Canberra-based Ambassador to New Zealand has been ordered home to explain racist remarks about Australia's closest and most sensitive neighbours.

Nati Tamir, who eased Israel's fraught relations with New Zealand after flying to Wellington in the wake of the Mossad passport affair, reportedly made the remarks to an Israeli newspaper during a visit to Tel Aviv.

Mr Tamir is accredited to Wellington but is also Israel's ambassador to Australia, Papua New Guinea and Fiji.

Mr Tamir told the newspaper Ha'aretz last week that Australia and Israel - which shared a relationship as close as Israel's with the United States - were like sisters in Asia.

"We are in Asia without the characteristics of Asians," he was reported as saying. "We don't have yellow skin and slanted eyes.

"Asia is basically the yellow race. Australia and Israel are not. We are basically the white race. We are on the western side of Asia and they are on the southeastern side."

Prime Minister Helen Clark said that if the remarks had been correctly reported, they were "completely unacceptable".

"If they were made by anyone in our public service there would be quite severe consequences."

The comments sent a shudder through Canberra, whose relations with Asia have recently been tested by Prime Minister John Howard's closeness to the US and advocacy of preventive strikes against terrorist targets in third countries.

Relations with the closest neighbour, Indonesia, have further been chilled by visas granted to asylum seekers from the rebellious province of West Papua.

Canberra also continues to suffer from memories of the long-abandoned White Australia policy.

The Australian Government has declined to comment on Mr Tamir's remarks, but the Labor opposition's foreign affairs spokesman, Kevin Rudd, said that if the comments had been accurately reported they were unacceptable.

"Let's take this one step at a time. These are serious matters [and] I understand the Israeli Foreign Ministry has this in hand."

The Australian Jewish News site reported that Israel's Foreign Ministry had issued a statement saying that if the remarks has been accurately reported, they were "grave and unacceptable" and the ministry would not be able to carry on with "business as usual."

Mr Tamir took up his post in January last year, just as relations between Australia and Israel faced a rare disruption.

A consular official in the Israeli Embassy, Amir Lati, had been sent home at the request of the Australian Foreign Affairs and Trade Department, for reasons still not disclosed.

There was speculation his expulsion might have been connected to the conviction of two Mossad agents on passport charges in New Zealand that temporarily severed ties between Wellington and Tel Aviv.