Australia PM seen exploiting Bali terror over Iraq

Australia PM seen exploiting Bali terror over Iraq

Belinda Goldsmith, Reuters, Canberra

Relatives of Australian victims of last year's Bali bombings
accused Prime Minister John Howard on Tuesday of playing on
public emotions by using their loved ones to garner support for a
war against Iraq.

Howard, a staunch supporter of the U.S. hard line on Iraq, has
appealed to Australians to remember the 89 Australians who were
among 202 people killed in Bali last October if Canberra decides
to join any war against Iraq.

"This is a last-ditch effort to get support. Nothing else has
worked so Howard is now going on emotions," Brian Deegan, whose
22-year-old son Joshua was killed in Bali, told Reuters.

"It is unjustifiable to attack Iraq and I don't want innocent
Iraqis killed in my son's name. This is more than distasteful."
Maria Elfes, whose sisters Dimmy and Elizabeth Kotronakis died,
also accused Howard of exploiting emotions for political gain. "I
don't think you can use the memory of 89 people as an excuse for
war," she told Australian media.

The majority of Australians oppose involvement in a war
against Iraq without United Nations backing.

Australians were deeply shocked when the Oct. 12 bomb blasts
ripped through nightclubs packed with foreign tourists on the
neighboring Indonesian island of Bali, rattling a nation that had
previously felt isolated from such acts of violence.

As the final deadline on Iraq looms, Howard has stepped up
rhetoric linking Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction to
the possibility of more terror attacks like that in Bali, saying
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could arm extremists.

"We lost (89) Australians in Bali...and I will, amongst other
things, be asking the Australian people to bear those
circumstances in mind if we become involved in military conflict
in Iraq," Howard told New Zealand television on Sunday

Howard, a close ally of U.S. President George Bush, said his
Bali comments might have been "misconstrued" but he was making no
apologies for linking Iraqi weapons to future acts of terror.

"If we don't disarm Iraq, and chemical and biological weapons
get into the hands of terrorists, then we will potentially have
more disasters than even Bali," Howard said on Tuesday.

Australia has only ever recorded one act of terrorism on its
own soil -- when a bomb exploded outside a Sydney hotel during a
Commonwealth summit in 1978, killing three people.

However Howard's conservative government was one of the first
to send help in 2001 to the U.S.-led assault on Afghanistan to
hunt down al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the suspected
mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

Howard said no decision had yet been made to join any military
action against Iraq, whether U.N.-backed or U.S.-led.

But Canberra has already sent 2,000 troops, planes and
warships to join 200,000 U.S. and British forces in the Gulf and
there seems no doubt Australia will commit to war with Howard
echoing the American condemnation of Saddam Hussein.