No CIA Connection

Asked to comment on accusations n made during the Vietnam war that World Vision was connected with the CIA, Mr Renner replied that "there is not one single piece of substantiated evidence to support those accusations". He said his organisation did receive aid from the United States government during the war provided it supplied information in return "We were not so naive not to realise that it wasn't intelligence gathering, but we were working among dying children and we needed the money. It's all very well to sit here in a comfortable room and talk about government aid but you weren't there, I was, with children dying in my arms We needed money, for food, for drugs and other supplies," he said.

Up until this point, though occasionally hard pressed, Mr Renner had been able either to field the questions or skilfully evade them, but he was truly put on the spot when someone quoted from a World Vision publication sent out to New Zealand schools which more or less condoned the Indonesian government in putting down the East Timor rebellion. In defence, he said that that opinion was not necessarily his own, at which David Cuthbert leapt into the fray.

"Whenever you're pressed, Geolf, you make a nice run for cover and draw a distinction between your personal opinion and what the policy of World Vision is. Why don't you nail your Christian beliefs to a masthead. Are your principle so flexible that you are prepared to waive them so you can stay on there (in Indonesia)? Why don't you make a stand and say that the slaughter of a sixth of the country's population is wrong?" he asked.

"You can't hang an organisation on one statement in a book," Mr Renner offered weakly.

"But it's not just one thing," continued Mr Cuthbert. "That publication bears your imprint. On the question of Timor it says it was an internal rebellion that's been fairly and genuinely repressed by the government That's amazing! That's like saying in Nazi German "there's two sides to this question'." Mr Renner fell silent, and when the motion was put later in the alter noon it was passed.

Mark Wilson.