Locke Keith: Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Locke Keith: Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:615;Page:11258] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 It is important to have immunities for all those coming into International Criminal Court hearings because I do not think we would otherwise have them held in New Zealand. They would not be delegated here if there were a danger of the witnesses experts or anyone being snaffled away and tried for other offences. So it is important to have the integrity of the court here or wherever in the world. But in speaking to sections 10D and 10E in clause 3 I say that the intention of my amendment I telegraphed earlier was in relation to those sections. I think it is important to fill in what Phil Goff talked about in his second reading speech—that there would be a process of extending protection to persons attending a specified conference. 
The essence of my approach in the amendment was that with important conferences such as peace conferences—and I referred to the question of Aceh in my earlier comments—we have to give respect and status to those people attending and that helps the peace process. As I said the problem with Aceh was that they had this conference in Tokyo and had negotiators from the Indonesian Government side and from the Aceh side. Those talks broke up on the initiative of the Indonesian Government and then the negotiators were arrested back in Aceh. There was not sufficient respect for the negotiators generated through the international community. 
One thing I would like to do if we are going to be a venue for peace conferences—there was talk the other day of our perhaps being a venue for a peace conference on Kashmir and one might have different parties coming into that conference—is to give them full status. It is at the discretion of the New Zealand Government. It is not something that the attendees automatically receive. But one might have the option to give the parties—not only the governmental parties but the non-governmental parties—a status that includes diplomatic protection and immunity as part of that process. One can imagine that with the Middle East as well. One perhaps would have to give status to the Palestinians as well as the Israelis. 
I also mentioned in my second reading speech the question of Algeria which is very current at the present time with Ahmed Zaoui being in prison here. We may be hosting some reconciliation conference here of the State party the Algerian regime and non-State actors like the official representatives of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) that Ahmed Zaoui belongs to. The FIS has official representatives in Sydney Washington and Switzerland and if they came here they might be given some status too. Mr Zaoui when hopefully he is out of prison shortly could participate in that sort of event as well. 
The intention of my amendment is that the Government can as part of its general approach of extending the bill beyond the International Criminal Court to international meetings—UN OECD World Trade Organization etc. or any specified conference—have a provision that non-Government actors can be designated as well whether or not those non-Government actors are part of an official State delegation. The question of Greenpeace came up earlier this afternoon; they may be part of an official delegation as non-Government organisation members particularly on environmental issues or non-Government organisations at a very high level. Amnesty International representatives for example might come from abroad to a particular conference we might be holding here and the head of Amnesty International from London perhaps could be given that particular status. I think the bill should be flexible enough to allow that.