JONES:
Prime Minister Howard, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning, Alan.
JONES:
These are difficult times, are they not?
PRIME MINISTER:
They are and it's important that the Australian public is kept informed. It's important that the Australian public understands that the objective of their Government is still, if possible, to resolve this issue peacefully and that will only possibly - I say possibly very deliberately - come about if the entire world speaks with one voice and says to the Iraqi regime, you must do as we have told you and if you don't do it and do it immediately then you face the possibility of military force being used.
JONES:
The Federal Opposition Leader has labelled you a disgrace for your claim that people who took part in anti-war rallies last weekend gave comfort to Saddam Hussein. How do you respond to that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I naturally reject that. He also suggested that I had accused them of being disloyal. I did no such thing. That's just untrue. I respect people who have a different view from me on this and I don't for a moment suggest that their loyalty to Australia is any less intense than mine or yours. I've never said that and I never would. That would be absurd. I was merely making the point that in the age of rapid communications, demonstrations of this kind, if they are taken in Iraq or elsewhere, as evidence of strong opposition to the disarmament of Iraq...and they have been, even the Greens Senator, Kerry Nettle, admitted yesterday that what I said was true. She said she was angry that the demonstrations had been used by Iraq to give themselves comfort, that there was a lot of opposition in western countries to what their governments were doing. Now, I don't for a moment contest the right of people. I celebrate, as you do, the right of people to peacefully protest. All I'm saying is that when all of us do things, those things, in the age of rapid communications, they're flashed around the world immediately, they are looked at overseas and people make judgements and that's the point I was making. Just as when I say something I have to quite properly be aware and live with the consequences of what I've said in other parts of the world. So it is with people who involve themselves in large demonstrations. Now, by all means do it but let's be honest enough to understand how it is read in other parts of the world.
JONES:
Only this week North Korea boasted they'd be certain of victory in any nuclear war with the United States which led the South Korean President, Kim Dae-Jung, and Japan to say that they may be forced to acquire their own nuclear weapons as a deterrent to North Korea. This is massive escalation of the crisis, isn't it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, it is and there's a connection. North Korea is behaving very badly and very provocatively partly because she sees a divided world in relation to Iraq. If the world had been more decisive earlier with Iraq I don't believe North Korea would now be the problem that North Korea is.
JONES:
But it raises legitimate concerns, doesn't it, about the United Nations?
PRIME MINISTER:
It does and the point has to be made, Alan, that if the United Nations does not discipline Iraq, what hope does it have of disciplining North Korea? And for all of those people who say, well, the Government should be focusing on North Korea and forget about Iraq, misses that point. There is a link between the two. The biggest long-term international issue at stake in this whole Iraqi debate is the authority of the United Nations. If the Security Council does not insist by force if necessary, as a last resort, on Iraq obeying its resolutions it will cripple its long-term authority and it will for many years be unable to do the collective security job on behalf of the nations of the world that it was established to do in 1948.
JONES:
Well, this will be the 18th resolution in 12 years. It's been defied on every previous occasion.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, it has been and that is why I'm taking the attitude I am. That is why this issue is coming to a head. The United Nations can't and the Security Council can't fudge it again. If it walks away from dealing with this issue firmly then the world will say, well, the United Nations is a paper tiger, it has no authority, we can ignore it. Now, that is the key issue. That is more important in the long-term than anything else because people say, people who criticise me say, let the United Nations solve it. That is what I'm saying but my criticism up to date is that is that the United Nations has been unwilling to solve it and the matter is only now back before the United Nations because the Americans took it back. I mean, people criticise the Americans for acting so-called unilaterally yet it was the Americans whose pressure got the weapons inspectors back into Iraq. That's something that Hans Blix told me was an established fact. I mean, they would not be there were it not for the American pressure. And people who criticise America are perfectly prepared to start on the assumption that you've got the inspectors there but only delivered there under American military pressure.
JONES:
Harvard University's human rights scholar, Michael Ignatieff, has been quoted quite freely this week as saying that there is no diplomatic remedy when you're dealing with a Hitler, a Stalin, a Polpot or a Saddam.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, it depends how you define diplomatic remedy. If you define diplomatic remedy just in terms of literal diplomacy and talking and missions and discussions and meetings, the answers probably...I agree with him. But if you define diplomatic effort or initiatives involving the deployment of force and the willingness to use it you can bring about results. And I go back to my weapons inspector example - they are there because of that and for no other reason.
JONES:
Just taking your proposition, though, that the United Nations now really is in the dock. Supposing that they don't come up to...step up to the plate the issue still remains, what we do with Iraq and with North Korea. Would then the United Nations, if the United Nations...the United States...well, if the United Nations don't step up to the plate are the United Nations...I'm sorry, are the United States entitled therefore to do as NATO did in Bosnia and Kosovo, go there without United Nations support?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I don't want to hypothesise about this situation because it's so sensitive and my remarks may be deliberately or otherwise interpreted but you are right to say that in the relation to Kosovo action was taken by the United States and other NATO countries to help the Muslims, let me stress, the Muslims of Kosovo who were being persecuted by Orthodox Serbia to help them. That action was taken outside the United Nations Security Council and, indeed, they went outside the Security Council because they knew that they would not be able to get a resolution.
JONES:
And I think I remember the world almost demanding that they should do this...
PRIME MINISTER:
The world had been demanding for years that this happen and, indeed, the handling of the terrible slaughter that took place in the former Yugoslavia, the handling of that by Europe was very unimpressive and it was only, in the end, American strength and American leadership and American intervention that saved the Muslims of Kosovo from further persecution.
JONES:
Absolutely. Just on Europe - France has given a red carpet treatment to Robert Mugabe.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, you know my views of Robert Mugabe, you know, I don't want to get into a stream of abuse of the French Government or the French people. I have a lot of admiration for that country and for its culture and its people but the treatment of Mugabe, that kind of international acceptance, I mean, to say that they're doing it so that they can confront him with his shortcomings sounds to me, to say the least, very na‹ve. He won't take the slightest bit of notice of that and he will parade this as an example of his acceptance by part of Europe and use it against other countries within the Commonwealth, such as Australia, who are trying to have the same standard applied to him as the Commonwealth demanded be applied to Fiji and to Pakistan. Fiji was thrown out of the Commonwealth for what happened. Pakistan has been suspended. Zimbabwe has behaved just as badly yet people are saying it should be treated differently. This is an issue of double standards and it's a test of the Commonwealth's credibility.
JONES:
And it probably says something about France, emphatically, that we already knew. Prime Minister, I don't know, you must be getting sick of it but I'll tell you what, the public out there are getting sick of it. There seem to be some people who want to see you off. There's speculation again today as to when you're going to be Prime Minister or not be Prime Minister. Why wouldn't you just say emphatically, to end all this, that you'll be leading the Liberal Party into the next election whenever that might be?
PRIME MINISTER:
Alan, I've seen that speculation and can I say that beyond making it crystal clear that I'm going to see the Australian people through the current Iraqi crisis, see them right through, I haven't made a decision about my long-term future.
JONES:
So you may not be leaving the Party.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I haven't made a decision, Alan, about that.
JONES:
[Inaudible] Stephen Waugh war of politics.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, there are many cricketlovers and other Australians who would regard that as about the finest compliment you could pay somebody. But look, I haven't and can I tell you, it is not something that I'm thinking about at the moment. All I'm thinking about at the present time is the issue we've been talking about and, indeed, all of the other issues. I find the job challenging but that's the position.
JONES:
Okay, we'll go to the news and thank you for your time.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[Ends]