Australia’s Rudd needs to lose ‘megaphone’ as FM ANALYSIS 09/15/2010

Australia’s Rudd needs to lose ‘megaphone’ as FM

ANALYSIS

09/15/2010
SYDNEY — Despite fluent Mandarin and his background as a diplomat, Kevin Rudd irritated Asian powers as Australia’s leader and will need to mend fences in his new role as foreign minister, analysts say.

Rudd, who becomes Australia’s chief envoy less than three months after being unceremoniously ousted from the prime ministership by his own party, was an outward-looking premier with a love of travel that earned him the nickname “Kevin 747.”

But despite high ambitions of placing Australia at the center of Asian development, Rudd, who was posted to Stockholm and Beijing as a diplomat in the 1980s, soured ties with China, Japan and India with his “megaphone” style.

“When he was prime minister he actually left behind quite bad relations with a number of states,” explained China expert John Lee, from the Centre for Independent Studies think tank.

“And it wasn’t necessarily bad relations between Australia and these states, it was bad relations between Kevin Rudd and these states,” Lee told AFP.... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100915com3.html