You're wrong on war: Rice
Peter Hartcher Political Editor
November 18, 2006
THE US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, has criticised as irresponsible the policy of the Opposition Leader, Kim Beazley, to immediately withdraw Australian forces from Iraq.
Dr Rice said in an interview with the Herald that the US was unhappy with the lack of progress in Iraq and was taking "a fresh look", but it would not be making any precipitate withdrawal of troops.
"We do not believe that an immediate withdrawal from Iraq is going to do anything but cause chaos in Iraq; and I think that responsible voices are saying that from across the political spectrum, whether people favoured the war or didn't favour the war," she said when specifically asked about Labor's policy. "I think a precipitate withdrawal would be irresponsible. The Iraqis themselves recognise that."
She said the US's policy review would "recognise that, four years into the conflict, we do need to address problems in the way that this has evolved, and find solutions to what is a new phase with a new government that's very determined to have a lot of responsibility for its own affairs."
With the prospect of Australian and New Zealand intervention in Tonga, another South Pacific state racked by violence, Dr Rice described the spreading instability in the region as a wave.
She said yesterday the US greatly appreciated the Australian and New Zealand roles as regional stabilisers, but "I don't think this is a place where American forces are needed".
This seems to confirm a division of labour in the Australia-US alliance, with Washington happy for Canberra to take responsibility for the stability of the South Pacific.
But Dr Rice differed with her Australian counterpart, Alexander Downer, on the role of the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum in the world trading system. Mr Downer said on Thursday an APEC free trade agreement should be a "plan B" in the event that the global negotiations stalled.
But Dr Rice said that the APEC nations, which include Australia, should work towards their own free trade agreement parallel with global trade negotiations.
"I wouldn't even call it a fall-back. I think we ought to be pursuing both. I think to see the power of these APEC nations united economically would be quite something."
Dr Rice warned of a rising protectionist sentiment in the US. There was "an increasingly uphill American battle to stay on free trade". She said that it made it "ever more important" for the European Union and the major developing countries to show more flexibility in the ailing round of global negotiations.
"No one should take for granted that the US can continue its policies of very active free trade in an environment where there are questions of fairness of trade."
The US Secretary of State criticised the Kyoto Protocol as a way of dealing with global warming, even as negotiators in Kenya discussed a successor to the agreement for the years after 2012.
"Let's recognise the Kyoto limits haven't worked that well. People really ought to go back and do an audit of how the countries that signed up for Kyoto did - I think it'll be a surprising story. They're not going to make their targets."
She said the US was very active in dealing with the problem, and expressed enthusiasm for an Australian plan to promote climate change as an important item for next year's APEC summit in Sydney. "We are very interested in that."
