VZCZCXRO4395
PP RUEHPB
DE RUEHWL #0910/01 3242052
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 202052Z NOV 06
FM AMEMBASSY WELLINGTON
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 3505
INFO RUEHBY/AMEMBASSY CANBERRA 4611
RUEHPB/AMEMBASSY PORT MORESBY 0611
RUEHSV/AMEMBASSY SUVA 0531
RUEHDN/AMCONSUL SYDNEY 0478
RHEHAAA/NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL WASHDC
RHHJJAA/JICPAC HONOLULU HI
RHHMUNA/USCINCPAC CAMP H M SMITH HI
RUEKJCS/OSD WASHINGTON DC
RHHMUNA/USCINCPAC HONOLULU HI

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 WELLINGTON 000910 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR D (FRITZ), EAP/FO, OES/OA, AND EAP/ANP 
NSC FOR VICTOR CHA 
SECDEF FOR OSD/ISD JESSICA POWERS 
PACOM FOR J01E/J2/J233/J5/SJFHQ 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/20/2021 
TAGS: ASEC CASC PREL NZ TN
SUBJECT: NEW ZEALAND ACTIVE IN TONGA AND FIJI 
 
Classified By: DCM David J. Keegan. Reasons: E.O. 12958, 1.4 (b) 
and (d). 
 
 
¶1. (C) Summary.  Alan Williams, Deputy Director at New ZealandQs 
Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade, told the DCM November 20 
that the current crisis in Tonga resulted from economic and 
political problems that have been developing over many months, 
but appeared to have abated. The Tongan Government was in 
disarray. For example, within 24 hours it requested, canceled, 
and then requested again military and police forces from 
Australia and New Zealand. Fiji remains a concern, and New 
Zealand has not yet decided whether it will allow Bainimarama to 
visit later this week for his granddaughterQs First Communion. 
Williams looks forward to discussing these issues next week in 
Washington. End summary. 
 
¶2. (C) Williams said that it had been a busy few weeks on 
Pacific Island issues, and he had spent much of the weekend on 
the cell phone with Prime Minister Helen ClarkQs party in 
Vietnam to discuss developments both in Tonga and Fiji. In the 
middle of our meeting, Williams took a call from Andrea Smith, 
Foreign Policy Advisor for the Prime Minister, currently in 
Sydney en route back from Vietnam, informing him that there 
would be a meeting early tomorrow, Tuesday, morning to review 
ongoing developments in the Pacific Island Countries. 
 
Tonga:  A Crisis When the Tsunami Appeared Past 
--------------------------------------------- -- 
 
¶3. (C) Tonga has been a focus of concern at MFAT for many 
months. Williams noted that he had done a memo last spring 
laying out what he described then as the Qcoming tsunamiQ of 
economic and political challenges facing the island nation. The 
economic storm was driven by a current accounts deficit and a 
bloated public sector. The political storm came from increasing 
pressure for democratic reforms, made only worse this autumn by 
the accession of a new king with little apparent understanding 
or sympathy for political reform. In the late spring and early 
summer, the Tongan government reduced the size of the government 
bureaucracy by twenty percent and began to get the current 
accounts deficit under control. In the last few weeks, TongaQs 
Prime Minister had reviewed the series of proposals for greater 
democracy, including calls for a larger percentage of elected 
seats in the national parliament, and responded with what 
Williams considered a very constructive proposal. There was a 
sense that the storm might have passed. 
 
¶4. (C) A failure to consult, rather than resistance to 
democratic change, appears to be what provoked demonstrations 
and violence. There was, Williams assessed, a sense by reform 
proponents that they were being excluded from influence on the 
reform process that they had initiated. It was that frustration 
that appears to have led to the demonstrations and eventual 
violence. Williams added that it was clear that the violence had 
clearly been planned, that rioters were being provided with 
Molotov cocktails and the like and sent out onto the streets. 
 
¶5. (C) The riots had caught the Tongan government, as well as 
Canberra and Wellington, off guard. The result was confusion and 
contradiction. For example, the Tongan Prime Minister had called 
Williams Thursday evening, November 17, to request that New 
Zealand together with Australia provide troops to help control 
the violence. After consultation with the Prime Minister on the 
road and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 
MFAT approved the dispatch of forces. Forty minutes before the 
NZ military aircraft took off for Tonga, Williams got a second 
call asking that New Zealand and Australia not send forces. 
Later on Friday, Tonga reversed course again and asked the 
forces be provided. Williams said he had, in the interim, made 
it clear to the Tongan government that no commercial flights 
would resume without complete security at the international 
airport. 
 
¶6. (C) New Zealand, in coordination with Australia, agreed once 
more to provide forces. However, the Prime MinisterQs office 
made it clear that she did not want to see NZ forces put in a 
situation where they would appear to be defending the current 
Tongan Government against democracy advocates. New Zealand did 
 
WELLINGTON 00000910  002 OF 002 
 
 
agree to provide anadditional twenty or so police forces to 
assist in forensic and arson investigations in the Tongan 
capital, Nuku-alofa. Williams said NZ would seek over the near 
future to transition its Tonga deployment to more police and 
fewer military. The Tongan Government has informed NZ that some 
of those suspected of instigating the violence of the past few 
days are trying to depart Tonga on board Air New Zealand 
flights, scheduled to resume today. NZ has made it clear that it 
would prefer to have the Tongans act to prevent their boarding, 
rather than having to decide itself on this issue. 
 
¶7. (C) A senior New Zealand consultant, Dr. Andrew Ladley, 
Director of the Institute of Policy Studies in the School of 
Government at Victoria University in Wellington, is currently in 
Tonga, on an MFAT grant, helping the government rewrite its 
government manuals. Last Thursday, he participated in a series 
of meetings by the Tongan cabinet and Privy Council (the cabinet 
in session with the King), which were coping with the developing 
protests and violence. Williams said that Ladley encouraged the 
government, he thought with some success, to be responsive to 
the protestorsQ demands, while remaining within the bounds of 
what the constitution allowed the government to do. 
 
¶8. (C) Separately, MFAT told POLOff that the New Zealand High 
Commission in Nuku'alofa anticipates that the King will make a 
speech (now being drafted) later in the week.  NZ MFAT will be 
looking at that speech with interest as it develops an 
assistance package.  The package, being led by NZAID with 
substantial input from the Department of Prime Minister in 
Cabinet, includes reconstruction assistance and provision of 
skilled arbiters.  Deputy Director of the MFATQs Pacific 
Division, Peter Heenan, said that a similar offer of arbitration 
was extended during the public service crisis last year, but 
that the offer was not taken up.  NZDF along with Australian 
counterparts have secured the airport, and Air New Zealand has 
resumed flights.  Heenan said that there is no hard deadline for 
the end of the NZDF deployment, but that a one-week deployment 
is currently anticipated.  Tonga defense forces have locked-down 
the central business district, and the NZ High Commissioner 
reported difficulty getting to work. 
 
Continuing Concern over Fiji 
---------------------------- 
 
¶9. (C). NZ also remains concerned that the political situation 
in Fiji remains murky and that an evacuation may become 
necessary. If so, the PM has said that any NZ intervention 
should be limited to protection of evacuation operations; NZ 
does not want to see a situation in which NZ forces might be 
sent to Fiji and confront the Fijian armed forces, who have 
extensive experience in presumably violent operational 
environments in the Middle East and elsewhere. 
 
¶10. (C) The political climate in Fiji is difficult to gauge, 
given BainimaramaQs confrontational approach to the Prime 
Minister and the Council of Chiefs, as well as the apparent 
widespread support for his political demands. New Zealand has 
still not decided how to respond to the request from Bainimarama 
for permission to visit next weekend to attend his granddaughterQ 
s First Communion. Williams said that the decision would need to 
be made in the next two days, but that there is still no clear 
indication of what that decision might be. 
 
Visit to Washington 
------------------- 
 
¶11. (SBU) Williams said that he is looking forward to discussing 
Pacific Island developments, as well as other areas in his 
portfolio -- the Middle East and Africa -- during his visit to 
Washington next week. 
 
McCormick