Howard seen using Bali blasts to win support on Iraq<\/p>\n
Belinda Goldsmith, Reuters, Canberra<\/p>\n
Relatives of Australian victims of last year's Bali bombings
\naccused Prime Minister John Howard on Tuesday of playing on
\npublic emotions by using their loved ones to garner support for a
\nwar against Iraq.<\/p>\n
Howard, a staunch supporter of the U.S. hard line on Iraq, has
\nappealed to Australians to remember the 89 Australians who were
\namong 202 people killed in Bali last October if Canberra decides
\nto join any war against Iraq.<\/p>\n
\"This is a last-ditch effort to get support. Nothing else has
\nworked so Howard is now going on emotions,\" Brian Deegan, whose
\n22-year-old son Joshua was killed in Bali, told Reuters.<\/p>\n
\"It is unjustifiable to attack Iraq and I don't want innocent
\nIraqis killed in my son's name. This is more than distasteful.\"
\nMaria Elfes, whose sisters Dimmy and Elizabeth Kotronakis died,
\nalso accused Howard of exploiting emotions for political gain. \"I
\ndon't think you can use the memory of 89 people as an excuse for
\nwar,\" she told Australian media.<\/p>\n
The majority of Australians oppose involvement in a war
\nagainst Iraq without United Nations backing.<\/p>\n
Australians were deeply shocked when the Oct. 12 bomb blasts
\nripped through nightclubs packed with foreign tourists on the
\nneighboring Indonesian island of Bali, rattling a nation that had
\npreviously felt isolated from such acts of violence.<\/p>\n
As the final deadline on Iraq looms, Howard has stepped up
\nrhetoric linking Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction to
\nthe possibility of more terror attacks like that in Bali, saying
\nIraqi President Saddam Hussein could arm extremists.<\/p>\n
\"We lost (89) Australians in Bali...and I will, amongst other
\nthings, be asking the Australian people to bear those
\ncircumstances in mind if we become involved in military conflict
\nin Iraq,\" Howard told New Zealand television on Sunday<\/p>\n
Howard, a close ally of U.S. President George Bush, said his
\nBali comments might have been \"misconstrued\" but he was making no
\napologies for linking Iraqi weapons to future acts of terror.<\/p>\n
\"If we don't disarm Iraq, and chemical and biological weapons
\nget into the hands of terrorists, then we will potentially have
\nmore disasters than even Bali,\" Howard said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Australia has only ever recorded one act of terrorism on its
\nown soil -- when a bomb exploded outside a Sydney hotel during a
\nCommonwealth summit in 1978, killing three people.<\/p>\n
However Howard's conservative government was one of the first
\nto send help in 2001 to the U.S.-led assault on Afghanistan to
\nhunt down al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the suspected
\nmastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.<\/p>\n
Howard said no decision had yet been made to join any military
\naction against Iraq, whether U.N.-backed or U.S.-led.<\/p>\n
But Canberra has already sent 2,000 troops, planes and
\nwarships to join 200,000 U.S. and British forces in the Gulf and
\nthere seems no doubt Australia will commit to war with Howard
\nechoing the American condemnation of Saddam Hussein.<\/p>",
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"sponsor": "Okusi Associates",
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