The veteran Australian diplomat Richard Woolcott has labelled a report in last Friday’s edition of The Australian newspaper that the US is not in agreement with Kevin Rudd’s Asia-Pacific plan as “mischievous and incorrect”.
Last Friday under the headline “Barack Obama’s man Kurt Campbell junks Kevin Rudd’s Asia-Pacific plan”, Norington reported:
Kevin Rudd’s proposal for an Australian-led Asia-Pacific community similar to the European Union has been slapped down by the top envoy chosen by Barack Obama to represent US interests in the region.
Kurt Campbell yesterday raised serious difficulties with the Prime Minister’s plan, declaring that Asians hated to be compared with Europe.
Speaking at US Senate confirmation hearing before his expected swearing-in as assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, Dr Campbell said multilateral diplomacy in Asia was still “very shallow”, and the success of any Asia-Pacific union would require deeper roots.
He made it clear that the US, rather than Australia, would see its role as harnessing and directing any large new institution that involved China and Japan.
But Woolcott, who is currently acting as an envoy in charge of selling Rudd’s Asia-Pacific plan, told Crikey that Norington, had “got it wrong ” and didn’t seem to know the name of Barack Obama’s top aides in charge of representing US interests in the region.
Norington named the aide as Dr Kurt Campbell but Woolcott said the name of the persons are in fact Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg.
Mr. Woolcott said Dr Kurt Campbell will play an important role in policy formulations to Obama’s top aides.
“The newspaper’s selective and totally wrong headline pointing to Norington’s piece did the paper no credit”, Mr Woolcott said.
“To say our closest ally has ‘junked’ the plan is just wrong and has no basis in fact,” he said.
Woolcott, who is Kevin Rudd’s envoy charged with “selling” the plan in the region, spoke to Crikey in Melbourne yesterday. He said he visited Washington in February and March and had 39 separate meetings with US officials and member of Congress.
He told Crikey that he had met with Henry Kissinger, who endorsed the Rudd plan in a op-ed piece in The New York Times.
“I also had a meeting with Admiral Timothy Keating the commander of the Asia-Pacific region.”
Mr Woolcott, a former Australian ambassador to the United Nations and our last representative on the UN Security Council, is known to have unparalleled access to US officials of all administrations.
He told Crikey that the reaction to the Prime Minister’s plan was generally positive.
And the reaction from the US embassy to the story seems to echo Woolcott’s assertions. In a letter to the editor published in The Australian today, Daniel Clune, the Charge d’Affaires ad interim, United States Embassy, has not minced words:
Crikey sought comment from Brad Norington but he did not respond before deadline.
why bother even trying to contact these worthless puppets. it is getting boring saying this, but newscrap just cannot stop itself from lying. it was always a media organisation to be wary of, but these days it is untruths, distortions and deception from front to back.
What effrontery! How about asking the Australian people whether they want to be part of Grosse Asia, answerable to an Asian dominated leadership and Asian dominated laws, transacting in an Asian denominated and dominated currency and subject to an Asian dominated military! Not even the Asian nations want this from what I can see so what could a small country like Australia possibly hope to gain by allowing itself to be swallowed by whales. Look at how the minor players in the EU have been hammered since the economic collapse.
That is the fate the Europeans have suffered when they accepted the proposition that the Common Market was only about trade. Baloney! Now the Euro elites who created this dysfunctional organisation refuse to allow the peoples of Europe to vote on whether they even want it. We know what happens every time they do and you can see how Ireland is being punished for its recalcitrance. Today the UK is subject to far more EU law than UK law and it’s getting worse. Soon the UK parliament will be peripheral and all the professional politicians will be off to Brussels for a decent “suck of the sauce bottle”. The results of recent elections to the farcical EU assembly show what the UK public think about it.
The EU in my view is a club run out of Brussels for the benefit of an elite group. Its actions are questionable in that its own auditors have refused to sign off on its accounts in the last 12 or more years. So what is going on you may ask?
Why, unless one were heading to the UN, would you want to sign on for this crap? Do Australians want to be merely a blip in an Asian block or their own nation? I am pretty sure the individual Asian nations have not had a change of heart either. Remember Rudd’s initial float of this idea received short shrift. So what program is the PM pursuing without the consent of either the Australian Parliament or the Australian people?
Maybe this should be the real question on the new Govt appointed blog site http://www.openforum.com.au rather that Bill of Rights window dressing.
Globalism is just a game of monopoly. Eventually one person owns everything!