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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen The Australian government strongly believes that it is in the national interest of this country that Iraq has its chemical and biological weapons taken from it and that Iraq be denied the capacity to ever develop nuclear weapons. Not only is it inherently dangerous to allow a country such as Iraq to retain such weapons, particularly in the light of its past aggressive behaviour, but the failure of the world community to disarm Iraq will encourage other rogue States to do likewise, safe in the knowledge that the world will do nothing to stop them....

The Prime Minister, John Howard, has cleared the way for an announcement on Thursday committing Australia to war in Iraq, if Britain and the United States fail to get backing for a new United Nations resolution. The resolution before the Security Council authorises the use of force, and Britain and the US are likely to call for a vote early on Wednesday, Sydney time. A Thursday announcement by Mr Howard would place Australia in lock-step with the US deadline of March 17 for Saddam Hussein to disarm. More than 250,000 British and US troops are on standby in the Gulf...

Australia's military declared on Thursday it was ready for war on Iraq. But Prime Minister John Howard strongly denied having a deadline for the conflict and said no decision had yet been made to commit forces to war. He said no decision would be made in the next few days or coming week, but would only come after a final decision by the United Nations Security Council on a new resolution, due late next week. Australia has about 2,000 military personnel in the Persian Gulf, including SAS commandos, F/A-18 jet fighters and navy ships, as part of the United-States build-up...

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...

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...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A growing number of Australians support the country joining a war against Iraq, with or without the backing of the United Nations, according to a newspaper poll published on Sunday, a week after global anti-war demonstrations. Twenty-four percent of respondents to the Sun-Herald/Taverner Research poll backed Australian involvement in military action against Iraq without U.N. approval, up from just six percent in an AC Nielsen poll four weeks ago, the Sun-Herald newspaper reported. Around 67 percent of those surveyed said they would support Australia's involvement if it was backed by the United Nations, up from 62 percent...

Aborigine insists tribal law gives right to underage sex By Kathy Marks in Sydney 22 February 2003 The place of tribal law in Australia's legal system will be reviewed after a 50-year-old Aboriginal man argued that tradition gave him the right to have sex with a 15-year-old girl. Jackie Pascoe Jamilmira, who lives in an isolated community in the Northern Territory, was given a 13-month jail sentence for having unlawful sexual intercourse with the girl, but had the sentence reduced to one day after an appeal. The girl, who had been "promised" to him in marriage by her family, initially...

Police will be able to enter houses without a warrant and seize handguns belonging to sporting shooters if the owner failed to attend sufficient competitions under proposed tough new firearms laws. And people found with banned pistols could be liable for prison sentences of up to 10 years, according to those who have seen the legislation, which was prompted by the Monash University shootings last year. But the new laws, expected to be introduced into the Victorian Parliament by early March, have sparked outrage from some shooters, who claim it threatens to decimate their sport. The laws are designed to...

An Australian power company is planning to build the world's tallest structure - a solar tower - in the middle of the outback. The project is part of a global campaign to encourage the use of more renewable energy. Enviromission says the tower, at a proposed height of 1,000 metres (3,300 ft), will be more than twice the size of the world's current tallest freestanding building, the Canadian National Tower in Toronto. The one billion Australian dollar (US $0.56 bn) project is being backed by the Australian Government, and is expected to be completed in 2006 in the remote Buronga...

Australia's eight "spidernauts" are among the casualties of the space shuttle disaster. Students and scientists involved in the project were eagerly waiting to see if the Australian Golden Orb Weaver spiders have been able to spin webs in space. They had spent 16 days in the space shuttle Columbia as part of a project to see if webs built at zero gravity are different to those created on the ground. Low resolution video images of the spiders suggest they have successfully built webs. If this had proved correct, scientists would have attempted to mimic the spider silk in aerospace structures...

War crunch time nears, RAAF deploys The federal government on Saturday declared crunch time for a war on Iraq was fast approaching as another 440 Australian troops prepared to deploy to the Persian Gulf for a possible attack. A squadron of 14 F/A-18 Hornet fighter planes, three C-130 Hercules transport planes and an Air Forward Command Element will leave Australia within a fortnight. Making the announcement in Adelaide, Defence Minister Robert Hill said Australia's commitment of more than 2,000 troops to the Gulf region would cost taxpayers several hundreds of millions of dollars. But he maintained the government had not...

Australia to back US no matter what Thursday 30 January 2003, 07:05AM A top Bush administration official believes Australia will follow the United States into a war with Iraq even without United Nations sanctioning. US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said planning between Australian and American troops was already smoothly underway. The words of Prime Minister John Howard showed that Australia would stand by the US in its efforts to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. "I think the very strong statements the prime minister made today make it very clear where Australia stands," he told ABC television....

World-first Australian Truffle FindAn Australian scientist has made a discovery which is electrifying world fungal biology – a new truffle genus related to the famous Amanita family, or fairy toadstools. The Amanita family is famed worldwide for the red and white-spotted toadstools beloved of children's fairy tales, the lethal Death Cap beloved of tabloid media, and a range of delicious edible fungi beloved of gourmets. The find, by CSIRO Forestry and Forest Products mycologist Dr Neale Bougher, highlights Australia as one of the richest centers of truffle biodiversity on the planet. Until Dr Bougher discovered the new fungus in the...

FEARFUL Australian families are buying personal gas masks and other survival equipment to protect themselves against biological terror attacks. One company which sells gas masks has reported a 40 per cent increase in sales post September 11, while another sells 800 single-use escape masks a month. The increase in survival equipment sales comes as the world copes with a new terror threat following the discovery of traces of the deadly poison ricin in a London flat this week. British airports and ports are on high alert and hospitals and health authorities have been sent details of ricin symptoms following the...

Australia will undertake a major upgrade of its special forces as the nation remains on high terror alert and prepares for possible involvement in a war against Iraq, Prime Minister John Howard said yesterday. ``I will be announcing a very significant reorganisation and upgrading of capacity in relation to Australia's special force,'' Mr Howard told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio in the western city of Perth. ``This bears very directly on our capacity to deal with threats of terrorist and indeed other kinds,'' he said. ``In the wake of what occurred in Bali, we have, over the weeks that have gone...

The first victim of the fires circling Sydney - an 81-year-man - was found in a burnt-out caravan in bushland yesterday as a cool but vicious southerly change continued to endanger suburbs. And in an ominous warning, the Rural Fire Service Commissioner, Phil Koperberg, said residents have just 72 hours to prepare for far worse conditions expected on Monday. So strong were yesterday's howling southerlies, they pushed embers from the fire threatening Brooklyn across the Hawkesbury River, causing isolated spot fires around Patonga. But they were quickly brought under control. Incredibly, no houses were lost across the state, leaving the...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian police armed with machine pistols, sledgehammers and shotguns raided the homes of at least two Australian Muslims after the government banned militant group Jemaah Islamiah, community leaders and media said. The latest raid came at dawn Wednesday in the western city of Perth, when officers in balaclavas and carrying submachine guns stormed a house neighbors said belonged to an Indonesian Muslim family, Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) reported. ABC radio said federal police declined to confirm whether the action was connected to a raid on the home of an Indonesian Muslim identified only as Jaya in Sydney...

Australia 'won't go down gun path' October 29, 2002 AUSTRALIA would not follow the lead of the United States where everyone had the right to own a gun, Prime Minister John Howard has said. Most Australians hated guns, Mr Howard said. He promised to do everything in his power to rid the nation of handguns, except for legitimate sporting shooters, security, the military and police. Mr Howard was responding to a a Newspoll survey which found 83 per cent of people supported moves to invoke stricter laws controlling handguns. Only 12 per cent of those surveyed were against tougher...

Northern Australia target for new Islam state By IAN McPHEDRAN and JIM DICKINS 29oct02 NORTHERN Australia is part of a radical plan for a new Muslim super state in South-East Asia, according to spies in the Philippines. A senior Philippines official said the radical group at the centre of the Bali bombing investigation, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), included parts of northern Australia in its plans. JI was behind a plot to blow up western embassies in Singapore and is implicated in other attacks in the region. National Security adviser Rolio Gomez told the ABC 4 Corners program Australian intelligence agencies were...