Labor to step back from US (Australia)

AMEN

Cynthia Banham
Foreign Affairs Reporter
February 16, 2007

KEVIN RUDD has promised that under a Labor government there would be a more independent approach towards the alliance with the US, with no automatic compliance with every aspect of its foreign policy ...

Mr Rudd, in his first pronouncements on the subject since assuming the role of alternative prime minister, nominated "three strong pillars" that would form the basis of a Labor govern- ment's foreign policy approach.

They were the US alliance, Australia's membership of the UN, and comprehensive engagement with the Asia-Pacific region ...

He said the alliance was "overwhelmingly in Australia's strategic interests". This was particularly so in the Asia-Pacific, with its incremental nuclearisation, growing militant Islam, and threats of regional pandemics. But he said: "Labor does not believe in an alliance which mandates automatic compliance with every aspect of US foreign policy. It is an agreement between two sovereign nations, underpinned by a set of common values and shared ways of looking at the world." Mr Rudd said that on Mr Howard's watch "instead of offering useful counsel, we became an unquestioning cheer squad for a deeply flawed policy on Iraq with ominous consequences for the future stability of the wider Middle East" ...

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