PM's world tour garners powerful supporters

Letter

The Australian

11^th April 2008

Anyone following Kevin Rudd's overseas tour cannot help but be impressed at the impact our Prime Minister has made even before making Chinese students laugh.

Never mind he was thought by some to have reservations about US President George W. Bush and US strategic policies: putting Iraq to one side, by throwing his weight behind the American surge in Afghanistan and encouraging NATO laggards to increase their troop allocations he is now almost all the way with our major ally, the USA, in its endeavours to contain international terrorism.

His support for moves to make the Doha round within our grasp and, with other leaders, to advocate a radical new international cooperative arrangement to supervise banks under the International Monetary Fund (which has been rather short of things to do) highlight Mr Rudd's understanding of the potential for international organisations to do good.

More than that, his successful persuasion of President Nicolas Sarkosy of France (not usually pally with Australia) and Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Britain to support our claim for a seat in the UN Security Council, and the fact that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon himself made a venue specially available for a press conference with a backdrop of that Council, speak words.

We are fortunate to have a prime minister saying what he thinks.

Let us hope he is not seduced into accepting an appointment in an international organisation such as the United Nations.