KEY POINTS:
Alert readers will have raised an eyebrow at an announcement this week that the Government has agreed to a waiver of the terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty so that the United States can supply nuclear fuel and technology to India.
New Zealand's view was important because
it is one of 45 countries in a "Nuclear Suppliers' Group" that is supposed to prevent the sale of nuclear material to countries that refuse to sign the non-proliferation treaty.
As you would expect, New Zealand has been one of the members most reluctant to grant the waiver and has been lobbied by India and the US Government for several months. None of this would need to be explained by now if the National Party had been in power and Labour in opposition. Labour would have raised a hue and cry from the moment the US-India deal was put to the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
Recent visits by India's Deputy Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Hardeep Singh Puri, and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, both of whom pressed for the waiver, would have been accompanied by intense public pressure on the Government to resist the request and probably demonstrations in the streets.
Labour and the Greens would have demanded that the Government not "sell out" New Zealand's anti-nuclear principles to curry favour with the US. But Labour is in power and essentially that is what it has done, with no audible objection from the Greens.
Helen Clark's Government has been responsible and reasonable on the issue, negotiating a number of conditions on the waiver, though none of them amounts to more than a watching brief on India's behaviour.
India is nuclear armed, as is its volatile neighbour Pakistan. Together they comprise perhaps the world's most dangerous nuclear zone. The US has agreed to supply India with technology for civilian nuclear purposes but there are fears this would only release India's other supplies for weapons development.
All this the US is doing in the hope that India will balance China's growing power, and, more immediately, support the Bush Administration in its campaign against the nuclear plans of Iran, which that country also claims to be limited to electricity generation.
The purposes of the deal do not seem worth the compromise to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Last week the London Economist, normally a supporter of US foreign policy, editorialised against the deal, pointing out that India acquired nuclear weapons by abusing technology intended for civilian purposes and the trade ban enforced by the Nuclear Suppliers Group has been the main underpinning of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The New York Times took a similar view in an editorial headed: "Let's hear it for New Zealand".
Only two other group members were also holding out, Ireland and Austria. Possibly it would be futile to resist such a consensus and New Zealand may have made the best bargain it could. But the decision leaves New Zealand's nuclear-free posture looking narrow, opportunistic and ludicrous. We are against anything nuclear in our patch but we are prepared to bless a serious breach in the integrity of the global attempt to contain nuclear proliferation.
If Labour finds itself back in opposition after this election it might be tempted to resume thumping the anti-nuclear tub, especially if the improving relationship with the US continues to a point that the next Government can revive naval exchanges and have our military invited back to exercises under Anzus. The decision on the India waiver might help bring that day closer. If it arrives, the Labour Party ought to remember its realism in office. Nuclear puritanism is finished.
