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MOSCOW - Iraq is 'teaching' its critics a lesson by breaking business deals with them, as Russia and Australia have found out. On Thursday, Baghdad cancelled a major contract with a consortium led by Russia's largest oil company Lukoil to develop a field in southern Iraq. A source in the Russian Cabinet warned that the cancellation could compel Russia to withdraw support for Iraq in international affairs. While Russia has said it hopes UN sanctions can be lifted, it voted last month to approve the tough resolution demanding that Iraq comply with UN inspectors. Iraq owes Russia at least US$7...

An international human rights group today accused the Australian Defence Force of beating asylum seekers with iron bars and prodding them with electric batons. It claimed Australian troops confined about 160 men to the lower cabin of a fishing boat for more than two days, in cramped and stuffy conditions, and refused to help a woman who was bleeding after giving childbirth on the deck of a boat. Human Rights Watch (HRW) released its 94-page report on Australia's asylum policy after an eight-month investigation. It says the government's asylum seeker policy breaches the country's international obligations to protect refugees. HRW...

The federal government focused on stimulating a cleaner fossil fuel industry amid fiery attacks from pro-Kyoto activists who said it was abandoning green energy. The government has stopped funding the Cooperative Research Centre for renewable energy while increasing funding for the mining industry by $68.5 million. Recent reports reveal a burgeoning renewables industry and the creation of tens of thousands of new jobs. Environmentalists, Labor, and the minor parties are livid that the government opted to pump millions of dollars into fossil fuels. They fear the decision could trigger a languishing in the green energy sector at a time of...

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Malaysia criticized the United States and Japan on Tuesday for supporting Australia's stance that it has the right to launch pre-emptive strikes against terrorists outside its borders. Australian Prime Minister John Howard said last week he was prepared to launch pre-emptive strikes on terror targets overseas. American and Japanese officials voiced support in separate interviews Tuesday. Malaysian Trade Minister Rafidah Aziz called the Australian position a threat to national sovereignty and said any strike on Malaysian soil would be considered an act of war. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who is visiting the Asia-Pacific...

THE Government yesterday was urged to increase the sentences for racially motivated crimes after the Kuraby mosque arsonist was jailed for six years. In the District Court in Brisbane, Judge Manus Boyce, QC, found Terrence George Hanlon was motivated by racial hatred when he burned the Brisbane southside mosque to the ground 11 days after the September 11 attacks on the US. Judge Boyce said modern Australia prided itself on being a "fair, just and tolerant society" which could not condone racially inspired crimes. He said that in England, legislation was introduced which increased sentences for those committing racially motivated...

The Bush Administration has sided decisively with the Prime Minister, John Howard, against his critics in South-East Asia over his threat of pre-emptive military action against terrorists in neighbouring countries. Mr Howard's remarks are "a wake-up call to some neighbours that they have to better police themselves," the US Deputy Secretary of State, Rich Armitage, said. Mr Armitage, who is visiting US allies in the Asia-Pacific this week to consult over Washington's confrontation of Iraq, is the second most senior diplomat in the US. He strongly endorsed Mr Howard's position, which sparked strong regional protests last week, and instead put...

Australian military officers are joining American forces in Qatar for a huge exercise designed to test command systems that would be used in a war with Iraq. The head of the Australian defence staff in Washington, Major-General Simon Willis, confirmed that Australian officers were expected in Qatar, in the Persian Gulf, to observe the classified exercise, Internal Look, due to start on Monday. The Australians are normally attached to US Central Command headquarters in Florida, which this week released details of the exercise. The inclusion of Australian observers demonstrates the close relationship between the US and Australia military and the...

AUSTRALIA garnered international opprobrium last year when it refused political asylum to 400 Afghan and Pakistani refugees stuck on a sinking smuggler's ship. The nation was described as cruel and heartless. The situation was not defused until ever-compassionate Canada stepped in to take charge of the refugees and shuttle them to host nations. In the wake of Sept. 11 and the terrorist attack in Bali, Australia's immigration policies suddenly look much more sensible. Australian immigration officials announced last week that 10 individuals linked to Jemaah Islamiya, the Islamic terrorist group that claimed responsibility for the Bali bombing, or other Islamist...

China has refused to be drawn on Prime Minister John Howard's "strike first" policy, saying it has noted the concern of other Asian countries. China's relationship with Australia, most recently seen with Australia winning a $25 billion gas supply contract, remains strong. Mr Howard's comments about pre-emptive strikes have drawn criticism from many countries in Asia, but China is not amongst them. A Foreign Ministry spokesman today refused to say if China supported or opposed the policy, saying China supports the fight against terrorism and action must follow the United Nations charter and international norms.

<p>SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) -- Australian police say they have confiscated a T-shirt showing U.S. President George W. Bush and al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden engaged in a sexual act, and are investigating whether it broke a 1931 obscenity law.</p>

SYDNEY, Australia (AP)--Prime Minister John Howard said Sunday that he was prepared to act against terrorists in neighboring Asian countries and that the U.N. charter should be changed to allow nations to strike pre-emptively against terrorists who plan to attack them. Australia has one of the most powerful militaries in its region _ with a modern air force and experienced special forces. Howard's comments came more than a month aftert the Oct. 12 bombings on Indonesia's resort island of Bali. The attack left nearly 200 people dead--almost half of them Australian tourists. The al-Qaida-linked terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah has been...

Australia believes international laws written to deal with major conventional wars need to be updated to cope with terrorism, and pre-emptive strikes should possibly be legalised under a revised U.N. charter. "Clearly a body of international law developed to deal with the sort of World War Two breakout...is not necessarily as flexible and as appropriate as current circumstances require," Australian Prime Minister John Howard said on Friday. Defence Minister Robert Hill said, meanwhile, that the definition of self-defence needed to be updated to include pre-emptive strikes as the new terrorism threat of weapons of mass destruction left nations no time...

An application for a Muslim place of worship has set off an avalanche of objections,writes Deborah Cameron. Put yourself in this man's shoes: he loves cricket, voted for John Howard, admires Liberal Party* values, owns a computer hardware company, has a building application before a council and is a Muslim. On six out of seven counts, he is everyman. But on the seventh point, his religion, Abbas Aly is the loneliest man in Baulkham Hills. His building application is unusual - he wants to open a Muslim place of worship - and his timing is awful. But the reaction has...

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has sharpened his latest attack on Australia by claiming that Australians will only be accepted in Asia if they stop giving unwanted advice to their neighbours. But the 77-year-old leader - a lifelong critic of this country - said he was pessimistic about the possibility of Australia changing its arrogant ways. "If it chooses to become a truly Asian country and stop giving advice to everybody, assuming it knows better about other countries than they know about themselves, I think we will welcome them . . . I don't think they can achieve it," he...

Australian pop singer Dannii Minogue has complained about the influx of Asians in Queensland and the liberal policies of British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a bizarre interview with men's magazine GQ. Minogue, the younger sister of the more famous Kylie, was interviewed by newspaper editor Simon Kelner over a £172 ($478) dinner at a French restaurant in London decorated with stuffed animals. Kelner described Les Trois Garcons - Minogue's choice of venue - as possibly the worst restaurant in the western world and the evening as an experience of epic awfulness, although he said that was not because of...

PSYCHIATRIST Dougald McLean and his wife Carol left the US in 1963 with their children for a safe haven in Australia. Today, they believe their haven in Hobart is threatened by the looming presence of a nuclear-powered American warship over Christmas, the key date in the Western calendar, making the city a potential target for a terrorist attack. "An aircraft carrier is an icon, a symbol of US military power," Dr McLean said yesterday. "There is no doubt about it, its presence makes Hobart a potential target. "We can't rule anything out when our own Prime Minister [John Howard] says...

They disagree over Australia's travel advisories and support of the US (KUALA LUMPUR) A war of words has erupted over recent travel advisories warning Westerners they risk terror attacks in South-east Asia. A senior Australian opposition legislator yesterday hit back at Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad for criticising Australia's travel warnings and support of the United States. 'I think frankly it's time the Prime Minister of Malaysia took a running jump,' Labor Party's spokesman on foreign affairs, Kevin Rudd, told Seven Network television. Mr Rudd was reacting to a weekend interview which Dr Mahathir gave to The Australian newspaper where...

HAPPY families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," wrote Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina, his 19th-century masterwork. Far be it for me to criticise some big-deal Russian novelist, but Leo couldn't have been more wrong about this if he'd tried. It isn't happiness that is shared; it's misery and failure. Examine the US Democrats, the Australian Labor Party and the England cricket team – who in recent weeks have lost, respectively, the Senate, the plot, and the first Test in Brisbane – and an uncanny pattern of similarity emerges: US Democrats: Can't field winning...

THE recent trial of Paul Burrell, the former butler of Diana, princess of Wales, is an example of why it is that the British monarchy is utterly at odds with Australian values. The Australian way is the republican way – in which no one is above the law. Yet our head of state, the Queen, was able to call a halt to Burrell's trial for theft simply by issuing a statement that supported his story. No one even bothered to ask if the Queen's statement was true. It was just taken as gospel. What the Burrell case also illustrates is...

Australia's Islamic community has warned the government to avoid undermining democratic freedoms with ASIO laws which would make the domestic spy agency a form of secret police. The federation of Islamic Councils said since the ASIO raids on Muslim families in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, Muslims had become subject to increased harassment across the country. Federation president Dr Ameer Ali said the ASIO raids, in the weeks after the Bali bombings, had affected the entire Muslim community in Australia. "Members of the Muslim community have in recent days witnessed and experienced firsthand the brutalising and terrorising of innocent families which...