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Australian Prime Minister John Howard said today his government would commit 2,000 military personnel to any U.S.-led strike aimed at disarming Iraq. The government also announced it had ordered the five diplomats who work at the embassy in Iraq and their families to leave the country, giving them five days to pack their bags -- a direct result of Australia's decision to join any war against Iraq. Canada, on the other hand, announced that its armed forces would play no role in any attack launched on Iraq by the United States -- a decision critics said would further aggravate the...

Australia will go to war with Iraq within days if the United Nations process has broken down. Prime Minister John Howard gave this strong signal yesterday as he said the issue was coming to a head. "If the UN was removed from the equation by the resolution not being put, then obviously the UN process has ended and we would, as a Cabinet, then meet and take a final decision," he said. The next meeting of Cabinet is scheduled for Wednesday but ministers on the National Security Committee could come to Canberra for a decision on going to war. Last...

AUSTRALIA was once again in the minority at the United Nations yesterday as it urged the organisation's Security Council to "mean what it says" and set a deadline for war. Taking a position firmly aligned to the US, Australian Ambassador to the UN John Dauth said "the best and perhaps the last hope for peace" was for the Security Council "to send a clear message to Iraq through a new resolution that it must disarm fully". Mr Dauth's comments were made during a debate among 42 countries without Security Council seats about the wider international community's views on the Iraq...

LONDON (AlertNet) - The 12 member agencies of Oxfam International have decided that they will not accept funding for their relief work from any government that takes part in an attack on Iraq, including the United States, Britain and Australia. As well as rejecting financial support for preparedness measures, relief operations or post-war reconstruction from those engaged in hostilities, Oxfam International members say they would also refuse to operate in areas of Iraq under military control.

OPPOSITION is mounting in New Zealand to next weekend's visit by John Howard, whose stand on war with Iraq and recent comments about joining the US missile defence system are seen by many as endangering the region. Anti-war protesters are planning demonstrations outside Mr Howard's public engagements in Auckland and Wellington over the weekend, and even Prime Minister Helen Clark, who is usually careful to avoid criticising Australian policy, said joining the missile defence program would encourage the use of nuclear weapons. "Our emphasis has always been on achieving comprehensive disarmament and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons," Miss Clark said. "There's...

AUSTRALIAN troops will be at the front line of any attack on Iraq, according to the first media reports to come out of the Middle East. Australian soldiers, interviewed in two of the five countries where the nation's military personnel are reported to be serving, sent heartfelt messages to their families through a Today Tonight report aired on Channel Seven last night. Nigel, from Brisbane, said: "I'd like to say hello to my wife and two kids and my parents. "I hope you are all looking after yourselves and I'll catch up with you soon." The Australian Defence Force had...

Passion, joy, sorrow and talk of lynchings - one London high street experienced it all yesterday. Adam Lusher reports As India triumphed over Pakistan in the cricket World Cup yesterday, Southall Broadway went wild. Thousands of miles away from the game in South Africa, the west London street was filled with joyous young men, adding their victory cries to a cacophony of car horns and fireworks. Indian flags were waved from windows. Many revellers danced outside pubs - their shoulders draped in the national emblem. However, it was hard to spot any members of the Pakistani community or their flags...

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad lashed out at Canberra's tough stance on Iraq, saying his Australian counterpart was insensitive to the civilian deaths a war would cause, according to a report Friday. Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a dogged supporter of Washington's hardline stance on Iraq, has sent 2,000 troops to join U.S. forces preparing for war in the Persian Gulf. "When people like Howard seem not to care for the lives of people in a war that is not actually connected to Australia, it is something that we cannot understand but we certainly condemn,'' Mahathir...

There is every reason to be extremely worried about a survey in Australia last week indicating that nearly half the population believes that Muslims and people from the Middle East do not belong in the country. Many may not find a growing Islamophobia in Australia all that strange. After all, Australia is one of the few countries that has backed President George Bush’s policies on Iraq; it was where mosques were attacked in the aftermath of Sept. 11, and the government has pursued a persistently hard-line policy against asylum seekers, invariably Muslims. Nor can anyone forget the notorious Pauline Hanson,...

Australia's Defence Force will be transformed into a mobile, flexible force to fight alongside the United States in conflicts across the globe, according to a new review. The Howard Government is even considering joining the US program to create a defensive shield against ballistic missile attack, a successor of its "star wars" plans. The changes are mapped out in the national security review released yesterday by Defence Minister Robert Hill, responding to the dramatic impact of terrorism on the "strategic landscape". It says the US alliance is a national asset, with its military dominance deterring enemies from attacking Australia. With...

I often find myself counting how many of us are left in this world. One recent morning my two surviving brothers and I had coffee together. And I found myself counting again. We used to be seven brothers and five sisters, another large family in a tiny Catholic country. One brother died when he was a baby. Antonio, our oldest brother, died in 1992 due to lack of medical care. Three other siblings were murdered in East Timor's long conflict with Indonesia. One, a younger sister, Maria Ortencia, died on December 19, 1978, killed by a rocket fired from a...

SYDNEY - Australia is now fourth on the world's terror attack hit list, with its flagship carrier Qantas most likely to be targeted, the country's leading authority on terrorism warned yesterday. But Mr Clive Williams, director of terrorism studies at Canberra's Australian National University, told an industry security conference that it was more likely an attack would take place overseas 'Since the turn of the millennium, 101 Australians have died overseas and if you go back 100 years, 20 odd people have died in Australia as a result of politically-motivated violence,' he said. 'Clearly the risk is way higher overseas,...

AUSTRALIA'S ambassador to the United Nations has urged the UN Security Council to deal with Iraq and Saddam Hussein without delay. John Dauth called on the council to "move quickly" to consider a second resolution that "deals decisively" with Iraq's failure to comply with moves to disarm the country. "Sadly, 11 years and 10 months after the Security Council first demanded Iraq disarm, (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein still has not understood the message," he said. "(Resolution) 1441 (passed late last year) set up two objective criteria of compliance - the provision by Iraq of a full and complete declaration of...

SYDNEY: Iraq has offered to double its wheat purchases from Australia, a US ally in Washington's military pressure on Baghdad, if there is no war in the Gulf nation. Iraq's charge d'affaires to Australia, Saad Al-Samarai, told Reuters yesterday that if there were no war, Iraq's Ministry of Trade was offering to double its imports of Australian wheat to around two million tonnes worth about A$900 million a year. Australian industry sources played down the offer. A direct offer had not been made by Iraq to Australia's monopoly wheat exporter AWB Ltd over possible increased sales, spokesman Peter McBride told...

ON the eve of Prime Minister John Howard's visit to Indonesia, some local politicians have said many of their countrymen were convinced he was a racist. They said this perception came from his controversial policies over the past year, including ASIO raids on Indonesian citizens in Australia in the wake of last October's Bali bombings. Mr Howard flew into Jakarta last night for a weekend visit in which he will try to allay concerns in the world's largest Muslim nation about a possible US-led war on Iraq. He will have talks with President Megawati Sukarnoputri today. But some politicians and...

TONY Blair last night welcomed John Howard's support for Britain's efforts to disarm Saddam Hussein, declaring the two governments were in "total agreement" on the handling of the Iraq crisis. As the prime ministers met, 1450 British troops secured London's Heathrow airport with tanks and special squads armed with machineguns patrolled the government office area of Whitehall and guarded Buckingham Palace. Mr Blair praised Mr Howard's "strength and leadership" in a press conference after the talks, drawing a compliment in return, with the Australian Prime Minister applauding his British counterpart for the "very strong stance you have taken". Earlier, Mr...

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration says it expects widespread military support from other nations for any war against Iraq, but so far only two have publicly committed troops to help put pressure on Saddam Hussein. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld this week held joint news conferences with officials from Australia and Britain, the only other nations known to be deploying troops to the Persian Gulf. The United Kingdom has begun sending forces expected to eventually number 45,000. There will be 35,000 troops, including one-quarter of Britain's army and its biggest naval task force in 20 years. Britain's Royal Air Force also...

President Bush's "coalition of the willing" is a mixed bag of nations some strong enough to provide military help, others limited to offering symbolic support but their leaders are united in standing with the U.S. threat to remove Saddam Hussein by force. Bulgaria's foreign minister, for one, looks at Saddam, sees Adolf Hitler and remembers the indecision that kept the Allies from standing up to Nazi Germany early and perhaps averting World War II. "We all remember the hesitancy of the Allies, who weren't sure whether to attack Hitler. They could have prevented so much," Solomon Pasi said this week....

Australian Prime Minister John Howard acknowledged on Wednesday that contingency plans were being made for war in Iraq, amid reports that defence commanders have been told to prepare to go to war in March. Sydney's Daily Telegraph quoted senior military officers saying they expected President George Bush to give the green light early next month for final 60-day preparations for a March campaign. Troops from the Special Air Services regiment, battle-toughened by a year in Afghanistan, will spearhead Australia's involvement as US and British forces lead major air and ground assaults, the newspaper said. The Australian war plan is said...

<p>SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- A municipal council in Australia's largest city has turned down an application to build a mosque after residents in the area said they feared it could be a hotbed for terrorists.</p> <p>Members of the Baulkham Hills Shire Council in northwestern Sydney voted 10 to 2 on Tuesday night to reject the application from a local Muslim on the grounds the mosque was not in the community interest.</p>