E&OE
20 March 2009
Australia Network: Interview with Jim Middleton
Subjects: Sri Lanka, visit to China, Afghanistan
MIDDLETON: For months Sri Lanka's armed forces have been engaged in a bloody offensive designed to eliminate Tamil separatists, who have been at war with the Government for a quarter of a century. But the international community's increasingly alarmed at the plight of innocent civilians caught in the crossfire.
The Government in Colombo insists it's doing all it can to avoid civilian casualties. But in the past few days, figures as prominent as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon have been on the telephone to Sri Lanka's President, suggesting his government's efforts are not good enough.
Stephen Smith is Australia's Foreign Minister.
Minister, welcome back to the studio.
SMITH: Thanks Jim.
MIDDLETON: What is Australia doing to add its voice to international demands that the Sri Lankan Government be more careful in looking after the safety, health and general welfare of innocent civilians caught up in the fighting?
SMITH: It's a gravely concerning situation. I've made that point to Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Bogollagama. I spoke to him recently. But we've been supporting the Tokyo co-chairs, Japan, Norway, the US and the EU.
The essential problem that needs to be solved is we've got to see a cessation of firing into areas where civilians are and a firing out from where civilians are. There needs to be a cessation of hostilities to enable the civilians to leave the areas where the Government and the Tamil Tigers are fighting.
MIDDLETON: The Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Australia admitted to me yesterday that there may, and I stress may, be isolated incidents of Sri Lankan armed forces shelling civilians in government designated safe areas. But even one incident of that kind is too many is it not?
SMITH: Absolutely. And that applies whether it's Sri Lanka or anywhere. We've been urging, as well, the need for humanitarian law to be respected and for the rights of innocent civilians to be protected and that's why, as I say, we need to see a cessation of hostilities to enable those civilians who are caught up in the hostiles in northern Sri Lanka to leave.
MIDDLETON: Now you're off to China within days, and I don't expect you to go into the details of the Rio Tinto-Chinalco deal, that's a matter for the Treasurer, and it's implications also for Australia's foreign investment policy. But how concerned are you at the increasing stridency of China's demands for actions aimed at getting a bigger chunk of Australia's resources?
SMITH: We have a very good economic relationship with China. There are a lot of things that hold us in good store. Our relationship - economically - started of course with minerals and petroleum resources. It's much more than that, but that's now the key area where there is desire on the part of China to move from trading relationship to investment. And our position is, as it's always been: Australia welcomes foreign investment. We always have. It's one of the things that helped make us economically strong...
MIDDLETON: But will you be reminding the Chinese officials that you speak to, of the national interests and competition tests which are central to Australia's foreign investment rules.
SMITH: Absolutely. You know, the Treasurer, Mr Swan, has made these points clear. In the end, sometimes these are difficult decisions to make. But they're made on the basis of whether we believe the investment is in our national interest. And the Treasurer will make that decision in due course.
MIDDLETON: Is the Government, in principle, opposed to Chinese ownership of the ore, the processing, the exporting and the manufacturing of Australian resources from top to bottom?
SMITH: Well these issues, we've actually dealt with as a nation before. When we saw, for example, our minerals resources industry starting to engage very intensely with Japan, Japanese interests also wanted to engage in equity and investment. It's not as if we haven't been down this road before and each of the particular arrangements, they're all examined for national interest implications. And as you correctly said at the beginning, these are national interest matters for the Treasurer.
But certainly, I'll be having, with my Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Yang, with whom I'll be having our second Australia-China strategic dialogue, a conversation about these matters. But also other economic matters. The desire on our part to have a free trade agreement with China, and matters that go to our mutual interests, regionally and globally.
MIDDLETON: On that score, with the G20 Summit coming up pretty shortly, will you be encouraging China to use its money - and it's one of the economies which actually does have money these days - to help the world spend its way out of this financial crisis?
SMITH: We make two points everywhere we go, whether it's the Prime Minister, whether it's the Treasurer, whether it's me: that we've got to make sure that we have stimulus packages throughout the world, to get domestic economies moving again. We've had two domestic stimulus packages here. China, of course, have had a multi-billion dollar package - $885 billion.
The second point we always make is the need to get so-called toxic assets off the books of the financial institutions to enable credit to flow again. And we make those two points.
But one thing I will be particularly interested in will be the Chinese view of the state of their own economy, to make sure that they continue to believe, for example, that they'll be sitting somewhere around six per cent domestic economic growth. That's coming off a high, and coming off a high from 10 to six does have adverse implications for the rest of the world, as well as for China.
MIDDLETON: But will you also be making the point that as China, as an emerging giant, has a responsibility; that it cannot afford to sit on the sidelines - as say the Japanese did in defence, to a certain degree in economic matters - that it really must play a significant role, and if that is, if it is to play that role, then that involves putting its money where its mouth is?
SMITH: Certainly I wouldn't make any comparison, or draw any link to Japan and defence matters, for the obvious historical reasons. But so far as China is concerned, both economically and generally, we want China to be a responsible stakeholder: to play its part, not just in our regional community but in the international community, playing its part economically, playing its part socially and doing that in a responsible way - as a country of a billion people who is emerging as a superpower needs to do. And that to us is also China's aspiration and its intention.
MIDDLETON: Shortly after China, you'll be going to a meeting of foreign ministers about Afghanistan in the Netherlands. Will you be pressing the Europeans again to lift their game in Afghanistan. After all, it's only recently that President Obama suggested the war there is being lost.
SMITH: Whatever description we give to it and the label I tend to use is strategic stalemate, which is why I've welcomed the strategic review that the Obama Administration has put in, not just on the military front, but on the civilian reconstruction and capacity building front. And also on the need, at some point, for there to be a political dialogue amongst the Afghanistan political leadership.
But it's a meeting of foreign ministers which is broader than just NATO or the International Security Assistance Force. There's a deliberate intention here to try and bring in some of the regional players, some of the regional countries to make the point that this is a significant regional and international community problem. It needs to be addressed at those levels I've referred to - military enforcement, civilian capacity building and politically, including an invitation to Iran which I think is a good thing to see, sending a message to Iran that people are prepared to engage in dialogue.
So I suspect we'll, as foreign ministers did at the Afghanistan Donors’ Conference in Paris last year, tend to focus more on the reconstruction of the political front, leaving the military assessment front, in the first instance, to the US review, but also to NATO and ISAF countries themselves.
MIDDLETON: Stephen Smith, Minister, thanks for joining us once again.
SMITH: Thank you Jim. Thanks very much.
[ENDS]
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