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S Pacific to top Clark-Bush meet

"The issue is a lot of instability caused by low growth, population pressures, few employment opportunities, poor governance."

Helen Clark, New Zealand prime minister

The troubled South Pacific region, which has been roiled by coups, riots and civil strife in recent years, will top the agenda when New Zealand's leader holds talks with US President George W. Bush this week.

New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark flew to Washington yesterday for her second White House visit in five years. She is scheduled to meet Bush tomorrow to discuss security and good governance in the South Pacific region, which was rocked by instability last year, including a military coup in Fiji in December.

Clark is expected to seek greater US participation and cooperation in a region that also experienced outbursts of political violence and rioting in East Timor, Solomon Islands and Tonga last year.

The US has acknowledged the key stabilizing roles played by the region's two powerhouses, Australia and New Zealand, which have warned consistently the area could become a haven for money launderers, people and arms smugglers, and even terrorists.

"The issue is a lot of instability caused by low growth, population pressures, few employment opportunities, poor governance," Clark said yesterday shortly before leaving for Washington.

Terrorism, world trade reform and international environmental challenges will also be on the agenda, with New Zealand recently extending its troop commitment in Afghanistan to late next year, officials said.

Clark's trip to the US is seen as opening a new phase in bilateral relations, more than 20 years after military alliances were suspended by a law in New Zealand that banned nuclear weapons and vessels from its territory.

Full military ties have yet to be restored but a thaw was signaled last June after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters agreed to work on strengthening relations.

The two leaders are not likely to discuss either the anti-nuclear row or Iraq, a war New Zealand declined to join, officials said.

Clark made a written apology to Bush in 2003 after suggesting the US war with Iraq would never have happened had former vice president Al Gore, a Democrat, been president.

Last September, Clark said the Iraq invasion had created a new haven for terrorists, and the security crackdown after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the US had failed to make the world safer.

But the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, which included New Zealand troops and succeeded in unseating the Taliban, was "absolutely right," Clark has said.

Clark's second White House visit -- the first was in 2002 -- will include lunch with Bush and meetings with Rice, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, US Trade Representative Susan Schwab and National Science Foundation director Arden Bement on Antarctic cooperation.
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