Washington, 16 July 1971
Personal
I am seeing the Secretary of State on Monday. I had hoped to see him by myself to probe him on President Nixon’s speech but the New Zealand Ambassador has been asked to be present too. I have spoken quite sharply to Marshall Green this afternoon about this, and have said the State Department should not assume that Australian and New Zealand policies are identical on all matters, including Chinese representation. Green replied that on this particular occasion the Secretary was very pressed for time.
I know that you also found it irksome that New Zealand was present whenever we were being briefed on new developments. The policies of our two countries are not necessarily identical. Even where they are similar in substance, there are differences in emphasis. Sometimes Frank Comer pursues his own rather puckish way, with which I do not always want to be associated. Again, as happened this morning at a meeting on SALT at which the New Zealand Minister was present, he broke in when I was trying to develop a line of questioning and diverted the discussion to something else.
For these reasons I felt that I should say quite bluntly to Green that on occasion Australia wanted and was entitled to a separate talk on matters about China and Vietnam.
This is for your personal background. You will know from your own experience here how difficult it is to achieve anything on this particular matter.
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