Helen Clark on 20 years since Iraq war and why New Zealand didn’t join - On the Tiles

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Former Prime Minister Helen Clark Photo / Ross Setford

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It was on the sidelines of the Queen Mother’s funeral that then Prime Minister Helen Clark made one of the most consequential decisions of New Zealand’s 21st century foreign policy.

It was March 2002, and Commonwealth and other heads of government flocked to London to pay their respects to the late Queen Mother.

The then-British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, appeared to be using the event to sound out Commonwealth leaders for a potential invasion of Iraq.

Speaking to On The Tiles, the NZ Herald’s politics podcast to mark the 20th anniversary of the invasion, Clark said she “became aware that something might be in the offing quite early in 2002″.

“I went to the United Kingdom for the Queen Mother’s funeral, and there was the possibility raised when I was there of an invasion of Iraq,” Clark said.

Clark said that Blair drew the “short straw” when it came to raising the prospect of invasion with her, because she made it clear that New Zealand’s participation in an invasion was off the table. New Zealand would not be part of an invading force under her watch.

“I made it very clear then that that was not something that either I or the New Zealand Government would want to back,” she said.

Clark recalled that after this frank discussion with Blair, she never faced pressure to join the invading coalition in the months leading up to combat operations beginning on March 20, 2003.

She put this down to the importance of being clear, blunt and unambiguous, and avoiding boosting people’s hopes that she might change her mind.

This was a lesson Clark could draw from her time as a member of the Fourth Labour Government in the 1980s, where miscommunications over New Zealand’s nuclear-free policy before a planned visit of the USS Buchanan ultimately led to the US suspending Anzus obligations.

“You need to be very straightforward. What they [the United States] don’t like is being misled.

“I think an element of the USS Buchanan being turned away was that they felt that they’d been assured that a conventionally powered vessel would be able to enter New Zealand waters,” Clark said.

The Buchanan was conventionally powered and though capable of carrying some nuclear weapons, it was not carrying weapons when it was scheduled to visit New Zealand. The two nations attempted a workaround to ensure that the US policy of neither confirming nor denying the presence of nuclear weapons on ships need not necessarily be a barrier to non-nuclear ship visits.

Clark said that in both domestic and international politics, it paid to “do what you say and say what you mean”.

“Don’t mislead people because if you’re not direct and clear, that will come back to hurt you,” she said.

Clark said that as 2002 wore on and 2003 dawned, she was increasingly sceptical about the claims being made by the US about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

After the July, 2002 election, Clark travelled to the US as part of a promotion for a documentary.

While in New York, she made appointments at the United Nations to discuss the war.

Helen Clark famously stayed out of the Iraq war. Photo / Reuters

She met Hans Blix, former Swedish foreign minister who was then a United Nations monitor and weapons inspector in Iraq, Kieran Prendergast, a former British diplomat and then the Undersecretary General of the Department of Political Affairs, and Kofi Annan, the Secretary General.

“I clearly remember these meetings,” Clark said.

“Hans Blix said to me when I asked him ‘do you have any reason to suspect that Iraq still has nuclear weapons?’ - he said, ‘none’.

“He said their inspectors had scoured the place. They had followed up every lead they were being given by the US and UK,” Clark said.

Clark found Annan “very depressed”, ahead of the invasion.

“When I sort of asked the devil’s advocate question along the lines of, ‘but the US and the UK say that an invasion of Iraq to take out Saddam Husain would be legal’ he snapped and said it would be against international law,” Clark said, saying Annan was “very, very firm on that”.

“When I came back to New Zealand, I was clear with the Cabinet that the feeling in the UN headquarters from this range of people… was that there were no grounds for this,” Clark said.

She said her Cabinet was completely behind staying out of the war, but National and Act supported getting behind the US.

As invasion drew closer, Clark said New Zealand used the United Nations to condemn the invasion, with Clark taking a hand in drafting statements read by New Zealand’s representatives in New York.

This made new Zealand somewhat unpopular in the United States.

The late Kofi Annan was "very depressed" leading up to the invasion.

“This was no time for weasel words and diplomatic overspeak, and New Zealand needed to be very clear.

“I won’t say this made us popular in Washington D.C. - it didn’t, and, and I recall quite a difficult Apec leaders summit,” Clark said.

She described the atmosphere at these summits as “really quite, quite frosty”, with US President George W. Bush being “somewhat frosty with those who didn’t support [the war]”.

Looking back 20 years later, Clark said the war set a dangerous precedent that large countries could act unilaterally and ignore multilateral institutions.

“At the time of the debate and the Security Council, I remember making the point that it wasn’t right to try to make excuses for friendly countries breaking international law because if you did that, where was the moral authority to oppose a country that you’re not close to?” Clark said.

“Unfortunately, the US invasion of Iraq did set a precedent of one of the permanent five [UN Security Council] members, well, actually two, including the United Kingdom, refusing to hold back when they couldn’t get a Security Council [resolution].

“They proceeded with what clearly the Secretary General of the UN felt was an illegal invasion.

“Now, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is illegal under international law, and is a breach of the UN charter, but the same applied to the invasion of Iraq,” Clark said.

Listen to the full episode of the On the Tiles podcast for more on Clark’s memories from the time.

On the Tiles is available on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are back in late January.