Cablegate: New Zealand Active in Tonga and Fiji
VZCZCXRO4395
PP RUEHPB
DE RUEHWL #0910/01 3242052
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 202052Z NOV 06
FM AMEMBASSY WELLINGTON
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 3505
INFO RUEHBY/AMEMBASSY CANBERRA 4611
RUEHPB/AMEMBASSY PORT MORESBY 0611
RUEHSV/AMEMBASSY SUVA 0531
RUEHDN/AMCONSUL SYDNEY 0478
RHEHAAA/NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL WASHDC
RHHJJAA/JICPAC HONOLULU HI
RHHMUNA/USCINCPAC CAMP H M SMITH HI
RUEKJCS/OSD WASHINGTON DC
RHHMUNA/USCINCPAC HONOLULU HI
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 WELLINGTON 000910
SIPDIS
SIPDIS
STATE FOR D (FRITZ), EAP/FO, OES/OA, AND EAP/ANP
NSC FOR VICTOR CHA
SECDEF FOR OSD/ISD JESSICA POWERS
PACOM FOR J01E/J2/J233/J5/SJFHQ
E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/20/2021
TAGS: ASEC CASC PREL NZ TN
SUBJECT: NEW ZEALAND ACTIVE IN TONGA AND FIJI
Classified By: DCM David J. Keegan. Reasons: E.O. 12958, 1.4 (b)
and (d).
1. (C) Summary. Alan Williams, Deputy Director at New ZealandQs
Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade, told the DCM November 20
that the current crisis in Tonga resulted from economic and
political problems that have been developing over many months,
but appeared to have abated. The Tongan Government was in
disarray. For example, within 24 hours it requested, canceled,
and then requested again military and police forces from
Australia and New Zealand. Fiji remains a concern, and New
Zealand has not yet decided whether it will allow Bainimarama to
visit later this week for his granddaughterQs First Communion.
Williams looks forward to discussing these issues next week in
Washington. End summary.
2. (C) Williams said that it had been a busy few weeks on
Pacific Island issues, and he had spent much of the weekend on
the cell phone with Prime Minister Helen ClarkQs party in
Vietnam to discuss developments both in Tonga and Fiji. In the
middle of our meeting, Williams took a call from Andrea Smith,
Foreign Policy Advisor for the Prime Minister, currently in
Sydney en route back from Vietnam, informing him that there
would be a meeting early tomorrow, Tuesday, morning to review
ongoing developments in the Pacific Island Countries.
Tonga: A Crisis When the Tsunami Appeared Past
--------------------------------------------- --
3. (C) Tonga has been a focus of concern at MFAT for many
months. Williams noted that he had done a memo last spring
laying out what he described then as the Qcoming tsunamiQ of
economic and political challenges facing the island nation. The
economic storm was driven by a current accounts deficit and a
bloated public sector. The political storm came from increasing
pressure for democratic reforms, made only worse this autumn by
the accession of a new king with little apparent understanding
or sympathy for political reform. In the late spring and early
summer, the Tongan government reduced the size of the government
bureaucracy by twenty percent and began to get the current
accounts deficit under control. In the last few weeks, TongaQs
Prime Minister had reviewed the series of proposals for greater
democracy, including calls for a larger percentage of elected
seats in the national parliament, and responded with what
Williams considered a very constructive proposal. There was a
sense that the storm might have passed.
4. (C) A failure to consult, rather than resistance to
democratic change, appears to be what provoked demonstrations
and violence. There was, Williams assessed, a sense by reform
proponents that they were being excluded from influence on the
reform process that they had initiated. It was that frustration
that appears to have led to the demonstrations and eventual
violence. Williams added that it was clear that the violence had
clearly been planned, that rioters were being provided with
Molotov cocktails and the like and sent out onto the streets.
5. (C) The riots had caught the Tongan government, as well as
Canberra and Wellington, off guard. The result was confusion and
contradiction. For example, the Tongan Prime Minister had called
Williams Thursday evening, November 17, to request that New
Zealand together with Australia provide troops to help control
the violence. After consultation with the Prime Minister on the
road and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade,
MFAT approved the dispatch of forces. Forty minutes before the
NZ military aircraft took off for Tonga, Williams got a second
call asking that New Zealand and Australia not send forces.
Later on Friday, Tonga reversed course again and asked the
forces be provided. Williams said he had, in the interim, made
it clear to the Tongan government that no commercial flights
would resume without complete security at the international
airport.
6. (C) New Zealand, in coordination with Australia, agreed once
more to provide forces. However, the Prime MinisterQs office
made it clear that she did not want to see NZ forces put in a
situation where they would appear to be defending the current
Tongan Government against democracy advocates. New Zealand did
WELLINGTON 00000910 002 OF 002
agree to provide anadditional twenty or so police forces to
assist in forensic and arson investigations in the Tongan
capital, Nuku-alofa. Williams said NZ would seek over the near
future to transition its Tonga deployment to more police and
fewer military. The Tongan Government has informed NZ that some
of those suspected of instigating the violence of the past few
days are trying to depart Tonga on board Air New Zealand
flights, scheduled to resume today. NZ has made it clear that it
would prefer to have the Tongans act to prevent their boarding,
rather than having to decide itself on this issue.
7. (C) A senior New Zealand consultant, Dr. Andrew Ladley,
Director of the Institute of Policy Studies in the School of
Government at Victoria University in Wellington, is currently in
Tonga, on an MFAT grant, helping the government rewrite its
government manuals. Last Thursday, he participated in a series
of meetings by the Tongan cabinet and Privy Council (the cabinet
in session with the King), which were coping with the developing
protests and violence. Williams said that Ladley encouraged the
government, he thought with some success, to be responsive to
the protestorsQ demands, while remaining within the bounds of
what the constitution allowed the government to do.
8. (C) Separately, MFAT told POLOff that the New Zealand High
Commission in Nuku'alofa anticipates that the King will make a
speech (now being drafted) later in the week. NZ MFAT will be
looking at that speech with interest as it develops an
assistance package. The package, being led by NZAID with
substantial input from the Department of Prime Minister in
Cabinet, includes reconstruction assistance and provision of
skilled arbiters. Deputy Director of the MFATQs Pacific
Division, Peter Heenan, said that a similar offer of arbitration
was extended during the public service crisis last year, but
that the offer was not taken up. NZDF along with Australian
counterparts have secured the airport, and Air New Zealand has
resumed flights. Heenan said that there is no hard deadline for
the end of the NZDF deployment, but that a one-week deployment
is currently anticipated. Tonga defense forces have locked-down
the central business district, and the NZ High Commissioner
reported difficulty getting to work.
Continuing Concern over Fiji
----------------------------
9. (C). NZ also remains concerned that the political situation
in Fiji remains murky and that an evacuation may become
necessary. If so, the PM has said that any NZ intervention
should be limited to protection of evacuation operations; NZ
does not want to see a situation in which NZ forces might be
sent to Fiji and confront the Fijian armed forces, who have
extensive experience in presumably violent operational
environments in the Middle East and elsewhere.
10. (C) The political climate in Fiji is difficult to gauge,
given BainimaramaQs confrontational approach to the Prime
Minister and the Council of Chiefs, as well as the apparent
widespread support for his political demands. New Zealand has
still not decided how to respond to the request from Bainimarama
for permission to visit next weekend to attend his granddaughterQ
s First Communion. Williams said that the decision would need to
be made in the next two days, but that there is still no clear
indication of what that decision might be.
Visit to Washington
-------------------
11. (SBU) Williams said that he is looking forward to discussing
Pacific Island developments, as well as other areas in his
portfolio -- the Middle East and Africa -- during his visit to
Washington next week.
McCormick