Our nuclear free law has never stopped the USA sending a ship here, but the law means the prime minister must be satisfied naval ships coming aren’t nuclear powered or armed.
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Peace campaigners last took to the seas to block U.S. Navy visits in the early 1980s, before the New Zealand government banned visits by nuclear armed and powered vessels.
The U.S. Navy will send a ship to New Zealand later this year, ending an impasse over the country’s anti-nuclear policy dating back to the 1980s.
Following talks between U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and New Zealand Prime Minister John Key on Thursday, the countries announced that a U.S. warship would visit a New Zealand port for its navy’s 75th anniversary celebrations in November. Mr. Because the US won’t officially confirm or deny if its ships have nuclear capabilities, New Zealand’s default position has always been to ban them from its waters.
“Thirty years ago New Zealanders drew a line in the sand”.
Biden returned to the U.S. later Thursday, wrapping up a trip that also included Australia.
At the start of the bilateral meeting, Key said the relationship between the United States and New Zealand was in the best shape it had ever been.
“We’ve dealt with the matter”.
Biden is the most senior United States official to visit since President Bill Clinton in 1999. He flies out on Thursday after a 24 hour visit.
Mr Key said he’s naturally and obviously pleased that they have accepted. Relations only between began to improve when New Zealand made a decision to contribute troops to the US-led mission in Afghanistan, ultimately resulting in the two countries’ signing a new defense pact in 2012. The prime minister said he did not yet know what type of vessel the US was planning to send, but said it would still need to comply with New Zealand law, which requires that he be satisfied that any ship entering the country’s waters has no nuclear capabilities.
Since 1986, no U.S. naval ship has been allowed to dock in New Zealand due to the U.S. policy of neither confirming nor denying a vessel’s nuclear capabilities.
And so he ended the 30-year rift over New Zealand’s nuclear free legislation.
“And that is conducted by way of formal advice from me as minister of foreign affairs to the prime minister under the act – of course, on the basis of advice I have received”.
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“We’re really concerned that the resumption of these military ties really means New Zealand going to war alongside the United States in other future wars – and potentially other future illegal wars”, she says.
