Sydney:

New Zealand’s foreign minister Winston Peters said on Thursday he had sacked the country’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, after he made comments seen as critical of United States President Donald Trump.

Phil Goff made the comments at a forum in London on Tuesday that appeared to question Trump’s grasp of history, contrasting the president’s attempts to thaw relations with Russia with the actions of Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill, who fought against Nazi Germany.

“President Trump has restored the bust of Churchill to the Oval Office. But do you think he really understands history?” Goff asked during a panel with Finland’s foreign minister Elina Valtonen.

Peters said in a statement on Thursday Goff’s comments were “deeply disappointing”.

“They do not represent the views of the NZ Government and make his position as High Commissioner to London untenable,” he said.

Goff did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment via his X account outside U.K. business hours.

Bede Corry, New Zealand’s top government bureaucrat in the foreign ministry, was working with Goff on a transition to a new ambassador, he added.

Goff, a former foreign minister and lawmaker in the centre-left Labour Party, was appointed as ambassador to the UK in 2023.

Peters leads the populist NZ First party in the current right-leaning coalition governing New Zealand.

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