British Queen Arrives in New Zealand

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, February 22, 2002

British Queen Arrives in New Zealand

British Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Duke of Edinburgh arrived in Wellington on Friday morning to begin their five-day visit to New Zealand.

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British Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Duke of Edinburgh arrived in Wellington on Friday morning to begin their five-day visit to New Zealand.

The Queen was greeted at Wellington International Airport by New Zealand Governor-General Dame Silvia Cartwright, and Acting Prime Minister Jim Anderton.

The Queen received a 21-gun salute and inspected a royal guard of honor at the airport. Then she boarded a private plane and flewto Taupo to have her private time at the scenic city in the central part of North Island.The Queen will return to the capital city on Sunday for official engagements.

Her New Zealand trip is sandwiched between visits to Jamaica and Australia, where she will open the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. The Queen's New Zealand trip will also bring her to Christchurch, the biggest city on South Island, and Auckland, the country's largest city on North Island.

It's nearly 50 years since the Queen first visited New Zealand,and times have changed since New Zealanders practized their curtseys and bows in anticipation of meeting the Queen. The Queen was greeted with little of the fanfare that accompanied her previous tour to the country in 1953, just six months after her coronation.

It is an ordinary Friday and everything goes normally.Schools are still open and streets unblocked. People are indifferent to Queen's arrival. The level of interest is so low that Prime Minister Helen Clark has faced no public backlash for her decisionto attend a think-tank of center-left political leaders in Sweden rather than greeted the Queen when she touched down.

Although opinion polls over the past few years suggest New Zealanders are fairly evenly split between those who want to retain the manarchy for the time being and those who want a change,a significant majority expect they will, one day, opt for a home-grown head of state.

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