Panetta first Defense Sec'y to visit New Zealand in 3 decades
By Craig Whitlock,
AUCKLAND, New Zealand — Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta found himself nose-to-nose with a band of chest-beating Maori warriors Friday, demonstrating the lengths to which the Obama administration is willing to go to bolster its military presence in Asia and the Pacific.
Panetta became the first Pentagon chief to visit this remote Southern Hemisphere nation since Caspar Weinberger in 1982. To do so, he had to pass muster with a fierce-looking honor guard of indigenous warriors who, in an elaborate ceremony, had to determine whether the American qualified as a friend or a foe.
The skirt-wearing Maoris yelled menacingly, flared their noses and stuck out their tongues. One of them then approached a somber-faced Panetta to perform the “hongi,” a ritual clasping of hands and rubbing of noses.
Panetta passed the friendship test. Afterward, leaders of the two countries — once allies but estranged militarily since New Zealand proclaimed itself a nuclear-free zone in the 1980s — pledged to revive their security relationship.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nose-to-nose-panetta-pushes-asia-strategy-in-new-zealand/2012/09/21/caea5b14-03da-11e2-9b6e-f3b809aa1542_story.html
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