Former New Zealand leader denounces leak on troops for Iraq

[sabra]

Source: DPA

Wellington - Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark angrily denounced Wednesday claims in a WikiLeaks document that she sent troops to Iraq in 2003 to ensure the country's dairy giant Fonterra retained UN Oil for Food contracts.

'I am absolutely incensed at the suggestion that some defence ministry personnel seem to have made to US diplomats that there was any connection between my support for sending engineers to do humanitarian work in Iraq with the interests of Fonterra,' she told Radio New Zealand.

'I mean this is simply preposterous.'

Clark, who headed a Labour government from 1999-2008, said the army engineers who spent a year in Iraq from September 2003, performing engineering and humanitarian tasks, were sent in response to a request from the UN Security Council.

A WikiLeaks cable from the US embassy in Wellington to Washington said, 'Senior MOD (Ministry of Defence) officials ... tell us it was not until Finance Minister Michael Cullen pointed out in a subsequent cabinet meeting that New Zealand's absence from Iraq might cost NZ dairy conglomerate Fonterra the lucrative dairy supply contract it enjoyed under the UN Oil for Food programme that the prime minister found a face-saving compromise and sent combat engineers in a non-combat role to Basra.'

Cullen denied this to Radio New Zealand and was supported by the current leader of the Labour Party, Phil Goff, who was foreign minister at the time.

Read more: http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/middleeast/news/article_1607219.php/Former-New-Zealand-leader-denounces-leak-on-troops-for-Iraq

[saigon68]

1. LOL-- The Dung Pile covered with Rose Petals Begins to STINK

What a POS that woman is--- she is an unmasked PUPPET in front of her Corporate Masters

[fascisthunter]

2. haha.... she's been Exposed (this is the damage the righties worry about)

exposing their pawns