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US-NZ agreement on ‘cutting-edge’ tech incoming

Thomas Manch thomas.manch@stuff.co.nz

Senior US official Dr Kurt Campbell says the White House will soon announce an agreement with New Zealand to collaborate on ‘‘cutting-edge’’ technology.

‘‘We are close partners and friends, and it is absolutely clear that the trajectory is for us to work more closely together,’’ Campbell told reporters yesterday. Campbell, US President Joe Biden’s national security council Indo-pacific coordinator, met Defence Minister Andrew Little and various New Zealand officials while spending less than 24 hours in Wellington at the weekend, en-route to other Pacific nations.

‘‘We want to step up our cooperation. We will be announcing soon that we want to launch a bilateral engagement between the United States and New Zealand on technology, it will be led by the White House,’’ he said. ‘‘ We’ve heard clearly a New Zealand ambition to advance its work in cuttingedge technologies. The United States wants to support in that work constructively.’’

Campbell visited the Solomon Islands last year, amid alarm among countries including New Zealand, Australia and the United States, that the Pacific Island nation had signed a security pact with China.

This week, he will lead a delegation of US State and Defence departments, USAID, and Coast Guard officials on a tour of Cook Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands.

He said countries in the IndoPacific, a US term for the AsiaPacific also adopted by New Zealand officials, had ‘‘stepped up in

ways that are hard to imagine just a few years ago’’.

‘‘This is a response to an urgent set of security challenges in the Indo-pacific, and likeminded countries are rallying independently to those challenges,’’ he said. Campbell had been a key figure behind the Aukus submarine deal between Australia, United Kingdom and United States. The security pact will transfer US and UK nuclear submarine technology to Australia, which will purchase up to five US nuclear-propelled submarines before building eight ships itself, at a cost of NZ$400 billion over 30 years.

New Zealand, which has a stringent anti-nuclear policy, has expressed interest in participating in broader, nonnuclear, aspects of the Aukus arrangement that are yet to materialise.

Campbell said he discussed the potential for New Zealand to be involved in a second tranche of the Aukus agreement over the weekend, with officials including the secretary of defence Andrew Bridgman and foreign secretary Chris Seed.

He said he understood the New Zealand’s ‘‘sensitivity’’ to nuclear, and the door was open for when New Zealand was ‘‘comfortable’’ to join the effort.

He said the bilateral technology agreement – separate from Aukus discussions – would have ‘‘many components’’, including military and security, as well as ‘‘how the United States sees investment in engagements in a range of issues like semiconductors and AI’’.

‘‘What we’re looking for is to open lines of communication to introduce New Zealanders to the key people in our government, [to] think about the future of technology, and really to take steps to advance that that dialogue, that agenda going forward.’’

Campbell has a close relationship with New Zealand, for a US official. He was in Christchurch when earthquakes struck in 2011. Two years later, he was made an honorary Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for ‘‘services to NZ-US relations’’.

‘‘This is a response to an urgent set of security challenges in the Indo-pacific . . .’’

Dr Kurt Campbell

National News

en-nz

2023-03-20T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-03-20T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281715503854670

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