Australia Steps Up-Again!

[Annie]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050712/wl_nm/afghan_australia_dc_1

Australia to send troops to back Afghanistan

Tue Jul 12, 6:43 PM ET

Australia plans to send up to 400 troops, including elite special forces and construction engineers, to Afghanistan to help hunt down a resurgent al Qaeda, Australian newspapers said on Wednesday.

Prime Minister John Howard and his cabinet met for several hours on Tuesday to consider the deployment to provide direct assistance to U.S. forces, which have suffered their worst combat losses in Afghanistan in recent weeks.

The Australian newspaper said the cabinet decided to send 150 special forces, as well as Black Hawk helicopters and engineers back to Afghanistan. The Australian Financial Review said up to 300 engineers with an infantry protection group were likely to be sent, alongside about 75 special forces.

Treasurer Peter Costello said Howard would make an announcement later on Wednesday, but that Australia's defense forces were in a strong position to help, due to a winding down of commitments in East Timor and the Solomon Islands.

"That means that our forces have adequate capability to meet the needs where they can help the fight against terrorism, whether it be in Afghanistan or anywhere else," Costello told Australian television on Wednesday.

Australia, a close ally of the United States, sent 1,550 troops to Afghanistan in 2001 to join the U.S.-led strikes that toppled the ruling Taliban, which was harboring Islamic militant network al Qaeda.

The troops were withdrawn by late 2002 and Australia currently has just one army officer in Afghanistan.

The United States commands an 18,300-strong international force, most of whom are American, fighting Taliban and al Qaeda militants in Afghanistan and hunting their leaders, including al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

New Zealand last month committed 50 Special Air Services forces for a third deployment to Afghanistan, where guerrilla violence has been rising ahead of parliamentary elections in September.

Howard said earlier this month that any decision to send soldiers to Afghanistan would have no bearing on Australia's military commitment to Iraq, where it has about 1,370 defense personnel.

 

[Annie]

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1413738.htm

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT

LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1413738.htm

Broadcast: 13/07/2005
Afghanistan crucial to terrorism fight, Howard says

Reporter: Maxine McKew

MAXINE McKEW: After today's announcement, the Prime Minister is just days away from getting first-hand briefings about Afghanistan and Iraq from both George Bush and Tony Blair. He leaves on Friday for a trip that will take him to the US and United Kingdom, but tonight he joins us live from Canberra. Prime Minister, good evening to you.

JOHN HOWARD, PRIME MINISTER: Good evening.

MAXINE McKEW: Is today's announcement of this redeployment to Afghanistan, is it in some way an admission that there are no easy victories?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, there are no easy victories. I wouldn't use the word "admission". I have never claimed there were easy victories. You only have an admission when something you previously claimed was wrong. I have never seen the war against terror as being something that's going to be won in the short term. I think it will take a very long period of time.

MAXINE McKEW: In relation to Afghanistan, though, you saw the commentary there that arguably we've wasted three years. There's no security outside Kabul and no unified leadership.

JOHN HOWARD: Well, the situation now is different from from what we reasonably expected it to be in the early months after the American-led attack in response to September 11. It's very easy now to say, well, three years ago we should have done this, that or the other. The truth is that we said then that we would provide elite troops at the sharp end of the military operation. We did. It was part of a very successful operation, and we left when that operation was successfully completed. In recent times, there has been a resurgence, and we are responding to requests principally but not only from the Afghani government to provide those troops again. Now, I don't want to understate the challenge but I also don't want to overstate it. We do have a legitimate government there, and it is tremendously important in the long-term fight against terrorism that moderate Islamic governments and states like Afghanistan now ruled by Karzai are supported, because in the long run, the war against terror is much a struggle for control of the heart and minds of Islam as it is a struggle between the terrorists and the rest of the world.

MAXINE McKEW: That could be a long-term struggle. Why then put any time limits on the dispatch of the SAS forces? You have said they're to be back well in time for the APEC conference.

JOHN HOWARD: Well, Maxine, I don't think the Australian people want a situation where we just make an open-ended commitment. You are really between a rock and a hard place on something like this. The reason why I talked about APEC in the context of the SAS is that there will be, at the time of the APEC meeting and in the months leading up to it, the need in this country for a heightened elite security capacity. That does not mean to say that you mightn't, if the need arose - and I'm not saying it will - replace the SAS with some other kind of military contribution. I was talking particularly there of the need to have people with that specialist capacity in this country in the lead-up to APEC.

MAXINE McKEW: Prime Minister, as you know, it's still the case that the British and the Americans are carrying the bulk of the load in both Iraq and in Afghanistan. Are you expecting them to be asked to be providing even more help when you meet, say with both President Bush and Prime Minister Blair? Are you expecting extra requests?

JOHN HOWARD: No, I'm not and can I say immediately that given our relative size, and our other responsibilities, I think Australia is punching well above her weight. I think our military contributions are widely appreciated, and admired in both the United States and Britain. But we are in a position particularly now that we don't have the commitments in East Timor and the Solomons, we are in an overall position to make these commitments, and you have to review these things from time to time according to circumstances, but I don't think ...

MAXINE McKEW: You have an open mind on this issue? For instance, if you look at Iraq now...

JOHN HOWARD: An open mind on what, Iraq?

MAXINE McKEW: Just wondering if you have an open mind on Iraq, because, you know, the most recent assessment on there is that the country is now a haven for foreign fighters, the insurgency is undiminished. There is an equally strong argument that we should be putting extra troops in there.

JOHN HOWARD: Well, Maxine, I don't think the picture in Iraq is as negative as you suggest. True, the insurgency is strong. It is also true that progress is being made in handing over in certain areas of the country greater security responsibility to the Iraqi security forces, be it remembered that it was the Iraqi security forces, operating on intelligence given by Iraqis to their own security forces, that led to the release of Douglas Wood. It was an Iraqi operation, and I was reminded of that by the man in question only yesterday. Now, as far as our commitment in Iraq is concerned, we have no current intention of increasing it. I think our commitment in Iraq is both appropriate and adequate. And we have no current intention of increasing it.

MAXINE McKEW: Prime Minister, just to return to Afghanistan for a moment, is it terrorism central, as Kim Beazley keeps saying?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, certainly, it is an area where terrorists are operating but terrorist are operating in Iraq as well. Mr Beazley doesn't seem to think that matters. He thinks we should be out of Iraq. That's my current understanding of what his current position is.

MAXINE McKEW: I suppose there's a difference with Afghanistan, is there not, in that surely part of the solution lies with one of the coalition allies, and that is Pakistan. I mean, no-one seems to doubt that elements of the Pakistani military are in fact helping to keep the Taliban alive.

JOHN HOWARD: Well, if that is the case, then it doesn't automatically flow from that that efforts are not being made by the Pakistani government, and...

MAXINE McKEW: Did you press this issue with President Musharraf when you met him recently?

JOHN HOWARD: Look, Pakistan has had a very unstable history. It's all very well for us to pontificate about what more the Pakistani government could be doing. If you look at the history of Pakistan, it's been a very chequered history. It's had experiments with democracy, it's then had military takeovers. It is a country that is riven with a lot of internal division, and if you take all of that into account, I think Musharraf is doing a very effective job in an extremely difficult situation. He is, after all, subject to regular assassination attempts, and he has to operate in an entirely different atmosphere and I think we should bear that in mind before delivering moral lectures to him from afar.

MAXINE McKEW: Prime Minister, to turn to the other shock news of today, that came out of the UK, in fact almost as you were honouring the dead Londoners at St Paul's this morning, three of the London bombers grew up in Leeds. Now, surely this means, does it not, that we're seeing something quite different from what we saw in both New York and Madrid, in that there you had, if you like the perpetrators were imported. Now we're looking at home-grown perpetrators.

JOHN HOWARD: Well, if that's the case, it does bring a new dimension to it, and the fact that they appear to be suicide bombers, that also brings a new dimension to it, and it just underlines the immensity of the problem that countries like Britain and to a lesser extent but nonetheless to some extent Australia faces. We shouldn't complacently imagine that there aren't potentially suicide bombers in this country. I believe the threat is less in Australia, but we should not be complacent about this. Fanaticism has always existed. The terrifying thing now is that the weapons available to the fanatics are both more lethal and more easily delivered, and that's what makes terrorism, modern terrorism, so much more threat threatening.

MAXINE McKEW: Prime Minister, if as you say you can't rule out that possibility that we could have potential bombers right here in Australia, what if today's announcement, this redeployment to Afghanistan and our continued presence in Iraq is all the provocation they need?

JOHN HOWARD: Maxine, these people are opposed to what we believe in and what we stand for, far more than what we do. If you imagine that you can buy immunity from fanatics by curling yourself in a ball, apologising for the world - to the world - for who you are and what you stand for and what you believe in, not only is that morally bankrupt, but it's also ineffective. Because fanatics despise a lot of things and the things they despise most is weakness and timidity. There has been plenty of evidence through history that fanatics attack weakness and retreating people even more savagely than they do defiant people.

MAXINE McKEW: But this must be a factor in your thinking. I mean, you make a decision - or Cabinet made yesterday a decision - to go ahead and put extra troops into Afghanistan. And as compelling a moral and strategic reasons as there are for that decision, there could be some people out there who seek to do us harm, who will see this as just the excuse they need. That must weigh in your decision, so you're saying basically that's a risk we have to take?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, Maxine, you cannot conduct the foreign policy of a country as if it were shadow-boxing with fanatics. You just can't do that. You have to take decisions that you believe are in your country's best interests, and I believe very strongly it's in this country's best interests in 2005 to do the things we are doing in cooperation with our allies and our friends. I cannot look you in the face or the Australian public in the face and say, "This country is guaranteed immunity from a terrorist attack." I hope and pray it never happens, but it's a possibility. We have to understand that that is the world we're living in, and it's fair to say that the people who died on the London Underground, they were certainly not all white Anglo-Celtic Christians, they were a combination of people of different races and of different religions and it just undermines the fact that murderous fanatics are the enemies of us all, not just the enemies of a stereotypical idea of what a Westerner represents.

MAXINE McKEW: Prime Minister, we have to leave it there, but thanks for your time tonight and have a safe trip.

JOHN HOWARD: Thank you.

 

[-Cp]

We love you Australia! God bless you for your support and friendship!

 

[xandy123]

Ahh good old Aussies always there when you need them, you know australia is like the only country eft that the U.S can really count on. They are also the only other coutry that hasnt botched the notion of free trade.

 

[-Cp]

Ahh good old Aussies always there when you need them, you know australia is like the only country eft that the U.S can really count on. They are also the only other coutry that hasnt botched the notion of free trade.

And gee, would ya look at that, they're cousins of the Brits - our other staunch ally..

 

[onedomino]

I think our military contributions are widely appreciated, and admired in both the United States and Britain.

They are appreciated very much. John Howard is an excellent leader.