232. Telegram From the Embassy in New Zealand to the Department of State1

1186. Department please pass to Secretary. For Secretary Vance from Ambassador Selden. Subject: Plea For an Early Visit to Washington by Prime Minister Robert David Muldoon. Ref: Wellington 0925.2

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1. Please permit me to bring to your personal attention my serious concern on learning today that Prime Minister Fraser of Australia is to see President Carter in June while Prime Minister Muldoon will not be scheduled until an indefinite time in the second half of this year. While I cannot give you the Prime Minister’s reaction since he is presently in London, those closest to him in New Zealand are dismayed and frustrated at the lack of progress in arranging for the Prime Minister’s Washington visit.

2. New Zealand press this evening are front-paging this frustration with additional comments out of Washington (likely New Zealand Embassy) that New Zealand getting the “run around” from White House staffers and discriminatory treatment over planned June visits for Australian PM Fraser but not for Muldoon. Press report quotes GNZ official in Washington as saying: Quote New Zealand and Australia have always been given equal treatment on things like this in the past but now the White House can’t even come up with proposed dates for Mr. Muldoon’s visit that we can talk about. Unquote.

3. One of the factors at work, as you are aware, Mr. Secretary, is the love/hate relationship existing between Canberra and Wellington with New Zealand as the smaller country feeling sometimes perhaps overly sensitive to the appearance of being subsumed in a larger Australian identity. This defensive New Zealand sensitivity about Australia has now been aggravated by the realization that Australia has stepped to the head of the line when Muldoon thought New Zealand would come before, or at least at the same time as Australia. When Fraser was seeing President Ford last year,3 Muldoon agreed to wait and see the President in the early spring of 1977. When this was ruled out several weeks ago he was given the impression by his Embassy in Washington that both he and Fraser would see President Carter in June and he so announced in the press. Consequently, public understanding of what has happened will cause Muldoon’s humiliation to be great. His supporters are already downcast, while his opponents, some of whom are quote ill-disposed towards the United States, will surely be gleeful. The public gibes against Muldoon, whose political image and, indeed, whose deepest inner convictions, are built on stalwart friendship with the United States, are certain to be nasty.

4. Against the background of the Prime Minister’s open public admiration for the United States; and his actions since taking office in November 1975 to strengthen and refurbish New Zealand-American relations, this lack of progress at arranging for his visit is difficult for [Page 766] New Zealanders to understand. First and foremost was Muldoon’s lead in the resumption of visits to New Zealand by American nuclear powered warships (NPWS), which had been barred since 1964. As you know, Mr. Secretary, two NPWS, the USS Truxtun and the USS Long Beach, did visit New Zealand in 1976, as Muldoon had assured and in spite of considerable public outcry. The result has been an undoubted strengthening of our ANZUS alliance with New Zealand and Australia. It should be kept in mind that it was Muldoon, not Fraser, who took the initiative in lifting this long-time ban on NPWS.

5. Moreover, it was Muldoon who took the lead in disavowing, along with Australia and the neighboring Pacific Island nations, the South Pacific nuclear weapons free zone which had been sponsored in the United Nations by the former NZ Labour government. However elusive in concept, the SPNWFZ bore adversely on navigation of the high seas and on the ANZUS alliance itself. Muldoon personally engineered the disavowal of these objectionable features of the SPNWFZ by all the concerned nations in this part of the South Pacific. [less than 1 line not declassified]

6. Further, the Prime Minister has taken the lead in seeking to check Soviet ambitions in the South Pacific island nations by concentrating the bulk of New Zealand’s external aid to these nations, and by encouraging the United States and other friendly countries to help the newly independent nations towards the development needed to meet the aspirations of their peoples.

7. Mr. Secretary, the present New Zealand Government under Prime Minister Muldoon is as close to the United States as any country can be. The Prime Minister is an ardent admirer of ours and a courageous and skillful advocate of closer New Zealand-American relations. He is bound to feel desolate by being put off in this fashion. Certainly he will feel still further aggrieved at the fact that Fraser will have seen the American President twice in the past year while he is still waiting. In a conversation last year he told me he would not impose upon the President in the election year but would await an inviation in early 1977. This has remained his steadfast hope and plan for the past nine months.

8. Mr. Secretary, I respectfully urge that you do everything you can to arrange for Muldoon to see President Carter. If it could be arranged for Mr. Muldoon to meet with the President for a couple of hours on his way home from the Commonwealth meeting in London with a fuller, official visit to follow later in the year, I would speculate this would be much more preferable than no visit at all. While I do not know what Muldoon’s reaction to such a proposal would be if it could be arranged, I would think it would do no harm (and perhaps much good) to explore it with the N.Z. Embassy in Washington. Two hours of the President’s time would likely be sufficient for a discussion [Page 767] of the substance of U.S.-N.Z. relations and certainly enough to preserve Prime Minister Muldoon’s prestige in his own country.

Selden

  1. Source: Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Brzezinski Material, VIP Visit File, Box 11, New Zealand, Prime Minister Muldoon, 11/8–10/77: Cables and Memos. Confidential; Priority.
  2. Telegram 925 from Wellington, March 15, reported that Muldoon hoped for a June meeting with Carter. (National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D770087–1207)
  3. They met on July 27, 1976. See Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, vol. E–2, Documents on East and Southeast Asia, 1973–1976, Document 62.