Australia launches damage-control push after Howard's comments

Australia launches damage-control push after Howard's comments

Agencies, Canberra/Kuala Lumpur

The government on Wednesday called together senior diplomats from Southeast Asian nations for a meeting in Canberra aimed at cooling fears Australia is planning preemptive anti-terror attacks in the region.

Prime Minister John Howard set off a diplomatic storm on Sunday by saying he would be prepared to launch such strikes to prevent a terrorist attack on Australia.

Downer said he used Wednesday's damage-control meeting to explain the comments.

"There has been a certain amount of criticism coming from some politicians in the region and naturally enough we have an obligation to deal with that and make the position a little clearer than it has been," Downer said on Australian Broadcasting Corp. television.

He said the diplomats who attended the meeting were Canberra- based, but did not identify them or which countries they came from.

On Wednesday, Malaysia threatened to break off counterterrorism cooperation with Australia unless Howard stopped behaving like "the white-man sheriff in some black country."

Malaysia and Indonesia have said that they would view unilateral strikes as an act of war and aggression, while the Philippines said that Australia will be seen as wanting to dominate the region.

"Their government attitude is not welcome," said Mahathir, who has long viewed Australia as an unwelcome agent of the United States in the region.

"We are cooperating as much as we can today in the fight against terrorism," Mahathir said. "But if they are going to blame us, we would have to rethink about cooperating with them."

Australia and Malaysia signed an anti-terrorism agreement in August which provides for increased sharing of intelligence.

The pact was inked in Kuala Lumpur by Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and his Malaysian counterpart, Syed Hamid Albar, who said it was testimony to a common desire cooperate in eliminating international terrorism.

Malaysia has detained more than 70 alleged Islamic militants since mid-2001, many of them members of the Jamaah Islamiyah group suspected of involvement in last month's Bali bomb attack in which almost half of the more than 190 victims were Australian.

The two countries are also members of a multilateral pact called the Five Power Defense Arrangement (FPDA), along with Singapore, Britain and New Zealand.

Malaysia's Defense Minister Najib Razak said on Wednesday that the pact was not threatened by the row, adding that he believed Australia would not launch any strikes in Malaysia without the government's permission.

"I believe the United States and Australian governments understand our stance on the matter, and will not do anything without our agreement," he said.

U.S. President George W. Bush has expressed his support for Howard's statement on the right to preemptive strikes.

Several other countries in Southeast Asia have also condemned Howard's comments, saying Australia must respect other nations' sovereignty.

Earlier, Downer tried unsuccessfully to calm fears.

"First of all, the prime minister did not suggest as some of the media in Southeast Asia are saying he suggested, that Australia was going off on bombing raids or sending troops into Southeast Asia," Downer said. "He made no such comment at all."

But Downer also refused to back away from Howard's stance, which has the backing of the United States, that he could use "all available means" to stamp out a terrorist threat to Australia, even if the terrorists were based in another country.

"In those circumstances no prime minister would say that they would willfully allow an attack on their people, and for their people to be killed without him or her doing everything possible to try to stop it," Downer said.