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MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS  HON ALEXANDER DOWNER, MP

TRANSCRIPTION: PROOF COPY E & OE

DATE:   5 September, 2007

TITLE:   Press Conference - Iraq, security agreement with US, China, GNEP, Air New  Zealand flights for Australian troops, climate change, nuclear power, DOHA round.



MR DOWNER: Let me just make a couple of points by way of introduction. First of all,  last night I hosted a dinner for a number of foreign ministers to talk about regional security  issues, to talk about progress in the area of counter terrorism, to talk about some of the trans-boundary issues, to talk about progress being made in the Six Party talks on North Korea, and  on all of those areas, I think the sentiment of the dinner was a very positive one. There’s a  sense in this part of the world, with of course a long history of differences and conflict in the  last century and in earlier centuries before that, that we have a remarkable degree of harmony  even if we don’t agree on all issues, and that real progress has been made in some tough areas  - counter terrorism in South-East Asia especially and through the Six Party talks, the North  Korean issue - and this progress is not being made by any one country alone. This progress is  being made by us as an Asia-Pacific community successfully cooperating with each other.

I participated this morning with the Prime Minister and my friends and colleagues in the  National Security Committee in a discussion with President Bush and Secretary Rice. We - I  think the Prime Minister has probably covered it and the President has covered it, I don’t

know that there is much more I can say, I haven’t watched their press conference but we -  certainly spent a good deal of time talking about the Middle East and obviously Iraq but also  the Palestinian question, Iran, that sort of suite of issues, the general fight against terrorism in

the Middle East and more broadly worldwide. It was a very good, a very frank and a very  successful discussion.

We made it very clear to the Americans we are pleased that their work in Iraq is making some  steady progress now. There’s no doubt that the surge is achieving some degree of success and  that’s encouraging. I think it gives people a lot more hope. There’s still obviously a very long

way to go, particularly in areas such as political reconciliation but at least some early progress  is now being made - later than we would have liked of course - but some progress is being  made there.

I noticed Paul Keating today said, was expressing a view that Saddam Hussein should have  been allowed to remain in office and it was wrong to throw him out but having said that, that  we have a moral responsibility to stay in Iraq, having gone in there in the first place. So I  think the important thing here is that people who reflect very carefully on this issue  understand the importance of making sure that we do create a situation in Iraq where the



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Iraqis are able to sustain their own freedom and their own democracy and maintain of course  their own security. If they can’t maintain their own security, then for all the problems there  are in Iraq, the place will become a major catastrophe on a much greater scale than we’ve  seen up until now. So I’m glad Mr Keating - who I don’t often agree with, by the way, but I  do agree with him about this - that we do have a responsibility to stick with the job.

JOURNALIST: What scale of military, of expanded military cooperation is Australia  likely to see with the US? Does it include defacto bases?

MR DOWNER:  (inaudible) this morning by the President and the Prime Minister.

JOURNALIST:  (inaudible)

MR DOWNER: The point I’d make is we’ve not made any decisions about issues like  basing, nor have the Americans. This is really about the transfer of defence technology to -  between Australia and the United States - facilitating the transfer of that technology and  obviously this will be good for the defence industry which is an important part of the  Australian economy and I’m from South Australia so I particularly appreciate that. So this is  just another building block in a strong defence relationship between Australia and the United  States which is a relationship which frankly works very much in Australia’s national interest.

JOURNALIST: Will any security talks be held between Australia and China and how  important are they to strengthening bilateral relations?

MR DOWNER: We have security talks with a range of different countries and my own  view is that could usefully be extended to include China. China is a good partner of  Australia’s and whatever differences there are between us in terms of our political systems,  human rights issues and so on, China is - it almost goes without saying - a very, very  important part of the strategic architecture, the security architecture, of the Asia Pacific region  and it’s important we have good forums to be able to discuss any issues of that kind with  them. So having some sort of annual security talks makes good sense between Australia and  China.

JOURNALIST: Would that be at ministerial level, those talks?

MR DOWNER: We might launch them at ministerial level and then we’ll see how it  goes. As the years go by sometimes these discussions are sometimes held at what is called in  Asia at vice ministerial level - they would send a vice minister from their side and the  secretary from our foreign affairs and/or defence departments. But we’ll have to wait and see.  I think we would think it was appropriate to launch such talks at the ministerial level during  2008.

JOURNALIST: Just very quickly, does that need to be approved by Congress?

MR DOWNER: It does.

JOURNALIST: Mr Downer, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, the Prime Minister



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has said that we will be part of that. How can the Government continue to say that we will not  be taking back nuclear waste if we are part of that partnership?

MR DOWNER: We won’t agree to do that and we’ve always made that clear. We’re not  planning and we’ve never planned and we never said we would and we’ve always said we  wouldn’t take nuclear waste back to Australia.

JOURNALIST: Isn’t that part of that partnership?

MR DOWNER: The plan is at this stage to convene a meeting in Vienna fairly soon -  an officials level meeting in Vienna - to talk about the GNEP as they call it, the Global  Nuclear Energy Partnership, and we need to discuss it and talk it through. I’m not signing up  to and we’re not signing up to every detail of the drafts that have been promoted publicly and  one of the things we won’t be signing up to is accepting nuclear waste in Australia. We’ve  always said that.

JOURNALIST: Mr Downer are we, is Australia reserving its right to (inaudible) in the  future if (inaudible)?

MR DOWNER: That’s a bit of an issue for the future I suspect. If Australia was to ever  enrich uranium and obviously there is some intellectual logic to that, we’d have to persuade  the international community that there was virtue in Australia enriching uranium, rather than  it being enriched in other countries. We’d get the value added from the enrichment but it

would have to be commercially viable and I’m advised that quite apart from having to work  pretty hard to persuade countries like the United States that Australia should enrich uranium  even if Australia - I mean you can have uranium enriched anywhere - to have it enriched in a  politically stable, sound and utterly reliable country like Australia is preferable to having it  enriched in some other corners of the earth. I think that is pretty obvious but it would take  some persuading to persuade other countries to feel comfortable with that as you can imagine  and secondly I’m not sure that it would be commercially viable either. I think there are real -  quite apart from the political obstacles - I think there are a lot of commercial obstacles to it.

JOURNALIST: Mr Downer, how would you portray the relations between New  Zealand and Australia at the moment?

MR DOWNER: Good, always good. We love New Zealand.

JOURNALIST: You did say…

MR DOWNER: Why do you ask the question?

JOURNALIST: I ask the question…

MR DOWNER: I haven’t spoken to them - who have I spoken to? I saw Winston  Peters, he came to dinner last night. So he made a good contribution of course, as Winston  always does so it was good to see him.



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JOURNALIST: You talked about a ban on Air New Zealand after the troop carriage  issue. Does that include banning Air New Zealand flights in the Pacific to Honiara and places  like that?

MR DOWNER: I think it is really more of an issue for New Zealand than it is for us and  this is the issue: that the New Zealand Government - which is a sovereign and a free  Government, they can make whatever decisions they like - they’ve made a decision that Air  New Zealand can only be used to carry Australian troops to certain places. Bearing in mind  there has to be some sort of vetting process every time we use Air New Zealand, it probably  saves any political embarrassment and controversy - which there seems to have been in New  Zealand a couple of weeks ago - if we don’t use Air New Zealand to move our troops around.  So instead of getting into the New Zealand Government approves their airline being used to  transfer troops to Honiara, or to Afghanistan or wherever it might be, but they don’t if they go  to Iraq, that’s all far too complicated. It’s much better that we don’t use Air New Zealand and  we keep right away from that controversy.

JOURNALIST: Do you think our Government is being a little precious?

MR DOWNER: That’s part of the politics of New Zealand. That’s something I always  deliberately stay out of - I know a lot about it - but I keep out of the politics of New Zealand.  Also, this is an issue we discussed a couple of weeks ago. I don’t sort of - you’ve asked about  it, I don’t particularly sort of want to beat it all up again. I don’t know what they think to be  honest about us not using Air New Zealand. But since they have a view that we can only use  Air New Zealand in certain circumstances, it’s easier for us not to use Air New Zealand at all.

JOURNALIST: On defence, the Prime Minister has spoken about agreeing to have US  resources based in Australia for disaster relief and talks with a vision for extra training  between the two countries. Does that not mean that we’ll have more of a US presence on our  soil?

MR DOWNER: If the Americans did decide to locate or pre-locate some equipment for  disaster relief, they’d obviously provide some people to assist with that task. But I think if we  are going to get the Americans to help with disaster relief in South-East Asia and the South  Pacific - and they did a very, very good job, by the way, in response to the tsunami - then if it  is easier for them to pre-position some materials in Australia, we wouldn’t have any particular  problem with that.

JOURNALIST: Would about the training side of things?

MR DOWNER: We already do a lot of training with the Americans - we do an  enormous amount of training with the Americans - so I think we feel comfortable with  continuing, even expanding, that training with them. I think it makes enormous sense when  you look at the way our defence forces have worked together over the years - I’d just take  more recently in the response to the tsunami in South-East Asia, especially Indonesia - and  the fact that Australian and American forces have trained together makes a lot of sense. It’s  good for Australia, it’s good for our security and it’s good in terms of our capacity to do the  sort of jobs like disaster relief.



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JOURNALIST: Mr Downer, do you agree with (inaudible) that Coalition progress in  Iraq is that we are ‘kicking ass’ (inaudible)?

MR DOWNER: Yes, well that’s a very American expression and I know from long  experience to just choose my own words, not always allow other people’s words to be put into  my mouth. But look, I think there is a (inaudible) coming out of Iraq, going back to the time I  was there which I think was in June/July - Brendan Nelson was there just last week and  President Bush, as you know, was there a day or so ago - and obviously we have an enormous  amount of communication between us, between Australia and the United States, Baghdad and  so on - my take out of it is this: my take out is there has been steady progress. There really  has. I am more hopeful and more positive about the situation in Iraq now than I have been in  recent times. I think real progress is being made. I think the surge is being shown to be well  judged. You are seeing a decline, quite a significant decline, in the number of security  incidents for example in Baghdad there’s been, in the last month or so, a very significant  decline in sectarian killings which is encouraging. I think President Bush made the point that  - and Brendan Nelson’s made this point recently too that - progress is being made against Al-Qaeda in Iraq. This is an enormously important issue because Al-Qaeda has actually, in my  view, been very successful in fighting sectarian conflict in Iraq. They’ve done a very good job  at doing that and good progress is being made against Al-Qaeda, in Al Anbar province which  is to the west of Baghdad but also in other parts of the country and that really is very  encouraging. That will not just be good in and of itself, but very important in terms of  reducing sectarian tension.

JOURNALIST:  (inaudible).

MR DOWNER: Taiwan - well what is your question about Taiwan?

JOURNALIST:  (inaudible).

MR DOWNER: I wasn’t in all of the meeting but in my time with President Bush, we  didn’t talk about Taiwan.

JOURNALIST: What can you tell us about the discussions regarding Iran?

MR DOWNER: We share with the United States a concern about Iran’s nuclear  program. Obviously the fact that they haven’t complied with all of their obligations under the  Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in particular through the IAEA - the International Atomic  Energy Agency - yet are proceeding with enrichment. We would like that process to stop and  that’s of course a view that’s shared by the United States and the European Union and Japan.  We also are concerned about some Iranian activity in Iraq. There is some of their activity  there which has been frankly of a real concern to us and we have a concern about Iran’s  position on the Middle East peace process and their lack of support for the quartet, in  particular for the two state solution in relation to creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel.  So we have quite a lot of concerns about Iran and he’s often talked about Iran so he has his  own robust way of expressing his concerns and we think it’s important the international  community maintains pressure on Iran so that we can start to over time allay concerns about



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an Iranian nuclear program and get a more constructive contribution from Iran on areas like  Iraq through to the Palestinian question.

JOURNALIST:  (inaudible) military action against Iran?

The Americans have never taken the military operation off the table and the United States  never will. That, I suppose, is a given of United States policy - that to just rule out the  military option would, from their perspective, be inconsistent with the traditional doctrine of  the United States military. So of course they are not taking that option off the table.

JOURNALIST:  (inaudible) foreign ministers, has there been any support for Australia’s  position on climate change?

MR DOWNER: There’s been good support for Australia’s position on climate change.  There are obviously different views. How can I explain this? Obviously I deal with this issue  day in and day out so I’m so familiar with the details of it when people come to the issue, they  are perhaps not necessarily familiar with the broader architectural issues. The history, which  is only a recent history, of the international community dealing with the climate change issue  has been that essentially developed countries have the responsibility to deal with this problem,  not developing countries. So it’s for the developed countries to carry the burden of CO2  stabilisation and reducing CO2 emissions. Our view is that we need to move beyond that,  there needs to be - whilst I by the way strongly support, passionately support, the efforts by  developing countries to lift their populations out of poverty and in the Asia Pacific region,  they’ve been incredibly successful at doing that - but nevertheless, they are going to have to,  in their own different ways and according to their own national circumstances, be prepared to  make a contribution to stabilising and eventually reducing CO2 emissions. To get from the  traditional position, which I described, to that position - that’s no easy task. That is actually a  very, very big challenge and a lot of developing countries, be they in APEC or be they outside  of APEC, are going to be quite resistant to that. But it’s my view and it’s Australia’s view that  we should try to get a, if you like, more inclusive approach of addressing greenhouse gas  emissions, particularly CO2 emissions and hopefully we will, through APEC, be able to make  some progress in changing the paradigm of how this whole issue of climate change is  addressed. But I have no illusions about that being easy. I’ve never, we’ve never set out on  this task thinking it would be easy. It would be easy to just say the developing countries  needn’t do anything. They can just benefit from the Kyoto Protocol’s clean development  mechanism and so on but they themselves needn’t do anything. That would be very easy -  you could get a piece of paper and sign very quickly along those lines. But I think we need to  move the whole agenda forward if we are going to get faster results in terms of addressing  CO2 emissions than we are getting at the moment, which is almost none. Under Kyoto,  without Kyoto, CO2 emissions during the commitment period would have increased by 42 per  cent if every country that has a target meets their target and that won’t happen. But if  everyone did then those emissions wouldn’t increase by 42 per cent, they’d increase by 41 per  cent. That’s not doing a real job here. So we’ve got a long way to go. This is tough diplomacy  but we’re working at it.

JOURNALIST: Do you agree with President Bush that basically if you are concerned  about the environment, that nuclear power is the answer?



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MR DOWNER: Nuclear power is part of the answer. It might not be in New Zealand,  and of course there’s a question about the economics of it in Australia, a country which has  such cheap coal - Australia must have about the cheapest coal in the world, being the world’s  largest coal exporter - but having said that, you think about the situation in a country like  China. China, on average, is building a new coal fired power station every single week. Now  imagine the contribution all of those extra coal fired power stations are making to CO2  emissions and to our climate. So if we are going to do something about that, we have to think  of alternatives. Clean coal technology is one but the economics of that aren’t there yet and  we’re working very hard on that. Obviously renewables are an option but to get base load  power from renewables, the technology is not sufficiently developed yet, other than hydro -

we are still working on that - nuclear can provide baseload power without CO2 emissions and  the technology of nuclear power stations and the storage of nuclear waste has massively  improved over the last few years. So I think I’m right in saying 30,000 - 40,000 coal miners  were killed in the last year world wide and nuclear power is proving to be a bit safer than coal  mining.

JOURNALIST: Are you hoping to finalise the wording of a climate change agreement  this afternoon?

MR DOWNER: No, no, no.

JOURNALIST: So the (inaudible) will have to be thrashed out by the leaders?

MR DOWNER: No. We’re not trying to do that here at the meeting. The meeting this  afternoon will be focussing essentially on human security issues - dealing with everything  from counter terrorism to avian flu, other pandemics and so on. I am hosting a breakfast  tomorrow morning of the foreign ministers participating at APEC where we will have a good  and a long talk about the climate change issue and then there will be negotiations, as is the  case in conferences like this, between ministers bilaterally, senior officials and so on, as we  cobble together a statement which the leaders will be able to consider. But at the end of the  day, the leaders will make the final decision.

JOURNALIST:  (inaudible) of the Asian nations having the environment on the agenda  in the first place?

MR DOWNER: Different people are entitled to different views in this great and free  world. But what I think is that climate change is an enormously serious issue and it is  absolutely appropriate to discuss it at one of the great multilateral conferences of the year,  which is the APEC ministerial meeting and the APEC leaders meeting. In fact I think it would  be wrong not to discuss the issue at all. Different countries have placed different degrees of  emphasis on this issue of climate change. I think this is a big issue and a very serious issue  and I think it is very important that we have put it on this agenda for this year. I’ve been  talking a bit about the architecture of how we deal with climate change, ultimately through the  UN process but I just make this point about it - the sooner we can try to work on newer and  more effective architecture than we already have, the better and APEC is a good way of  helping to promote this.



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JOURNALIST: How (inaudible) is the food safety (inaudible)?

MR DOWNER: I think it is an agenda item for APEC and we obviously take very  seriously this whole issue of food safety. That’s crucially important in terms of confidence in  international agricultural trade, international food trade so there needs to be greater  confidence in standards and there’s been some good discussion about that. I think there’s a  consensus about that.

JOURNALIST:  (inaudible).

MR DOWNER: I haven’t been in the discussions this morning. I’ve been at this other  meeting and Mr Truss has been chairing that.

JOURNALIST:  (inaudible).

MR DOWNER: I think there is a view that this is tough going - the DOHA round -  there’s no doubt about that. There are still quite considerable gaps between the positions of  different countries - some of which aren’t here, such as the European Union - the United  States is here, there’s the issue of their farm subsidies, for some of the developing countries  there is the question of industrial tariffs. There are working groups underway in Geneva, in  the WTO, trying to address these issues and I hope that in the final statement coming out of  APEC, we’ll be able to achieve a good consensus promoting a successful outcome to the  DOHA round but there’s a long way to go. It’s tough going.

JOURNALIST: Mr Downer, which countries in particular have supported Australia’s  position on global warming?

MR DOWNER: I think all countries in general support it but I’ve made quite a speech  about the differences between developed and developing countries and how this issue should  be handled so there’s obviously here - because there are a lot of developing countries  represented - here there is that bification I suppose but nevertheless I think we are having  good success. I think we are, we’ll get a good statement out of it I think, in the end. Whether  it will be as ambitious as we want, we’ll have to just wait and see.

Thank you.

[Ends]

