Australia’s former Prime Minister Paul Keating has labelled comments made by Liz Truss over China as “demented”.
Write in op-edFor Pearls and Irritations Keating described the British foreign secretary’s comments about Chinese military aggression in China as “a very unfortunate statement.” “nothing short of demented”.
Truss was also recommended by Keating “back to her collapsing, disreputable government”.
Keating wrote: “Remarks by the British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss that China could engage in military aggression in the Pacific, encouraged by Russia’s contingent moves against Ukraine, are nothing short of demented.
“Not simply irrational, demented.”
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Truss had been in Sydney last week with Australian counterparts and warned that China could use an invasion by Russia into Ukraine to launch military aggressions in the Indo-Pacific.
Truss stated this during an interview with The Sydney Morning HeraldAnd The Age: “I don’t think we can rule that out.”
She continued: “Russia is working more closely with China than it ever has. Aggressors are working in concert and I think it’s incumbent on countries like ours to work together.”
Keating served as Australia’s Labor Prime Minister from1991 to 1996 and has criticised Britain on its stance on east Asia.
He wrote: “Britain took its main battle fleet out of east Asia in 1904 and finally packed it in with its ‘East of Suez’policy in the 1970s. It has not stopped.
“Britain suffers delusions of grandeur and relevance deprivation. But there they were at Admiralty House kidding the rest of us that their ‘co-operation’ added up to some viable policy.”