E&OE
3 December 2008
Interview with Barrie Cassidy - ABC2
Subjects: Thailand, Afghanistan
BARRIE CASSIDY: Foreign Minister Stephen Smith is on a diplomatic mission in Europe this week. He's held talks with NATO Secretary General about Australia's ongoing role in Afghanistan, and today he's in Oslo where he's putting Australia's signature on an international cluster munitions treaty.
The Foreign Minister joins us now on the telephone from Oslo. Minister, good morning.
STEPHEN SMITH: Good morning, Barrie.
CASSIDY: First of all, in Afghanistan, more importantly, what did you pick up from NATO? Are they any more inclined to start carrying a bit more of the burden in Afghanistan?
SMITH: Well I picked up from the Secretary-General of NATO and also I had a session with the NATO ambassadors from the 26-odd NATO countries. Picked up from them - and Joel Fitzgibbon and I picked up from UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband and John Hutton, the Defence Secretary, when we were in the UK end of last week, which was Afghanistan remains a very difficult task for us. We remain committed to the task, because we think it's a current hotbed of international terrorism.
But we know we've got a range of problems. We need, in our view, to see an enhanced military contribution, but we also need to see an enhanced civilian capacity building contribution and, at some stage, we need to see from the Afghan political community or the Afghan political leadership, some form of political dialogue to end up with an enduring long term political solution.
And there's an emerging view - you'll recall earlier this year, we had the Bucharest conference in April. On the military side, we had the Afghan donors' conference in Paris a month or so later.
We think that in the first half of next year there's an appropriate time to do a bit of a review about where we are, what progress we're making and what ongoing difficulties we face.
CASSIDY: But where is that extra military effort going to come from? Do you think given that Barack Obama will be President of the United States in January, will it come from the United States, or will it eventually come from NATO?
SMITH: Well, on the basis of what the President-elect has said in the course of the election campaign and what people are analysing from that, there's an expectation that following the Petraeus review - General Petraeus is doing a review of the status of forces in Afghanistan - that following the Petraeus review and the consideration of that by the new Obama administration after 20 January, that the United States will make an enhanced contribution. There's also an expectation that it may well ask some, or all, of the NATO allies for an enhanced contribution as well.
We've made it clear that because we're the largest non-NATO contributor, we're effectively the tenth largest contributor, but we don't see an enhanced or an increased troop contribution from us. But I have indicated that we are open to contemplating a greater civilian capacity-building contribution. Training of police, training of army, building the state institutions to enable the Afghan Government and the Afghan people to manage their own affairs.
CASSIDY: Okay. In Thailand now, and given the developments there, is there no longer a need for emergency flights to get Australians out of Thailand?
SMITH: No, no, we are still applying ourselves very diligently to that, and Qantas and Jetstar, to their great credit, have been doing very good work. I think the figures are that in the last 72 hours, with special flights that Qantas have put on, and with Jetstar re-routing flights that were originally scheduled for Bangkok, which couldn't get through, which were re-routed to Phuket, that we've moved over 1000 Australians.
We're still in very close contact with Qantas to see whether there's an ongoing need for extra and special flights.
Overnight, or early this morning, Barrie, we have increased our travel advisory to Thailand. We're asking Australians to seriously consider the need to travel to Thailand, and that's as a consequence of the difficulties that we still have so far as the Bangkok airports are concerned, but also because of the increasing uncertainty in the political situation in Bangkok, and we think it's very important to clear out of Thailand as many of the Australians who are stranded there.
The problem, of course, is that we have so many tourists through Thailand, that as each day goes by, if the airport in Bangkok is closed, then we have a couple of hundred Australians who, effectively, at risk of being stranded. So we're still applying ourselves very diligently to that, and also, increasingly concerned about the growing political uncertainty in Thailand.
CASSIDY: Yeah, you talk about that political uncertainty in Thailand. Given the High Court - or given the court's decision to stand down the Prime Minister for five years, has Thailand any longer got a functioning government?
SMITH: Well, our position is, and we've been saying this in different circumstances for some time, we want Thailand's political and democratic processes to solve these problems. The last thing we want to see is resort to violence or resort to military activity. And to his credit, General Anupong, the military chief, has been making clear that he doesn't see it as being desirable for military intervention.
But the current Prime Minister, or the former Prime Minister, has indicated he's going to respect the constitutional court decision, effectively stand aside. And a number of his Cabinet colleagues are in the same position that he is in. We haven't seen a response from them as to whether they're going to take the same attitude.
But if the current ruling political party can find replacements for the Prime Minister and range of Cabinet ministers then they may try and put a new government together. But because of that uncertainty, and it's clearly a difficult internal political environment for them, as I say, we've increased our travel advisory to Thailand generally to reconsider your need to travel, because we just don't think it's sensible at this stage for more Australians to be going to Bangkok and Thailand with the current travel disruption and political uncertainty environment which exists.
CASSIDY: Stephen Smith, thank you for your time this morning. The Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, there on the telephone from Oslo.
[Ends]
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