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Mr Preble is being a bit hypocritical in this letter considering he was a cabinet minister in the government of the 1980's that implimented the no nukes ban that ended Anzus. I also think the USA should know who it's alies are - NZ has been supportive and contributed to every American led war without any payoff or benefit to it. New Zealand doesn't need billions in foreign aid to be an Ali of the USA because it an ali based on idiological and cultural similarity as are Britain and Australia. Punishing NZ by giving Australia a free trade agreement and excluding NZ for a relatively small idiological difference of wanting to keep itself nuclear free seems very harsh to me. Rightly or wrongly, NZ believes it shouldn't allow nukes into it's teritories and that was not an anti-american stance as proved by NZ's continued support of the USA in the gulf war etc since then. NZ stands with the USA on everything else. In my opinion NZ should have done everything it could to remain in Anzus as it was a benefit it had from being alied to the USA so strongly.

If A free trade agreement with Australia goes ahead without NZ, who knows how bad that could be for the NZ economy which is so strongly tied up with Australias. It would almost be like the USA having free trade between all of it's states but leaving one state out.

As for Richard Prebble, he is a politician and the only reason he would be revealing what the government of NZ was thinking about doing privately, would be to embarrass the government which will possibly change their mind about doing it. I am sure sending a NZ ship to the gulf or being supportive of America once again has nothing to do with trying to get a free trade agreement from the USA, as historically NZ has and always will be on Americas side and will contribute to a war on Iraq.