The New Zealand Government is being criticised for backing the military junta in Burma (also known as Myanmar) through a deal that sees state-owned company, Kordia, build cell-phone towers in that country.
The Burmese junta has been accused of carrying out extensive human rights abuses since a crackdown in September last year when at least 31 people were killed during protests.
National Party Foreign Affairs spokesperson Murray McCully says 100 percent Government-owned engineering company, Kordia (formerly BCL) has been working with a Thai firm, ALT Inter Corporation, through a joint venture called Kordia™ Solutions Thailand.
The work has been undertaken for Myanmar Post and Telecommunications, an agency of the Burmese regime.
Mr McCully said the deal raises questions given Helen Clark's position on flights to Kuwait and the sanctions imposed on Fiji.
"The decision appears totally inconsistent with Ministerial tantrums over Air New Zealand carrying Australian troops to Kuwait, and with the sanctions currently in place against Fiji," he said in a press release.
"Helen Clark and her colleagues must be fully aware that the military dictatorship in Burma is arguably the most brutal and repressive regime in the world. These guys make Frank Bainimarama look like a junior choir-boy.
"The Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi has been under arrest for decades. Meanwhile thousands of Burmese citizens, including large numbers of Burmese monks, were targeted in last years' brutal crackdown.
"It would be hard to find a regime with a more despicable track-record."
Green Party Foreign Affairs spokesperson Keith Locke said doing business with the Burmese regime was not a moral way to conduct foreign policy.
"If New Zealand truly supports democracy in Burma, we should heed the call of imprisoned pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, not to do business with the regime," he said in a press release.
New Zealand has been the most backward Western country in implementing sanctions against the Burmese junta, Mr Locke said.
The US has sanctions in investments in Burma, as well as on imports. The European Union bans the import of items such as timber and gemstones. Australia, the EU and the US all have frozen the financial assets for the junta.
Mr Locke said the Government's position to wait for the UN to move "will be a long wait because China will veto any sanctions resolutions in the Security Council."
China and Russia vetoed a US resolution in 2006 at the United Nations Security Council to press Burma toward democracy.
"The least the Government should do today is give a moral lead, first off by preventing any state-owned company helping the junta through its operations in Burma.
State-Owned Enterprises Minister Trevor Mallard told Radio New Zealand that Kordia checked that New Zealand didn't have any sanctions against Burma before it signed the contract. He said the work is only worth about $80,000, and that it did not alter New Zealand's opposition to the junta's rule, the broadcaster reported.
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