Australia to increase defense spending

Australia to increase defense spending

Associated Press, Canberra

Australia will likely increase defense and security spending in the wake of the Bali bombing and might need to send troops to Southeast Asia in the war against terrorism, the government said on Wednesday.

"When something like the 12th of October happens to a country like Australia you have to look right across the gamut and I felt in my bones that we would have to commit more resources to defense and security," Prime Minister John Howard told reporters.

The bombing on the Indonesia island of Bali earlier this month killed more than 180 people and injured 300. Some 90 Australians are missing or have been confirmed dead in the attack.

Many in Australia are comparing national anguish over the bombing to the pain Americans felt after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. U.S President George W. Bush also has made the comparison.

After the Bali bombing, Defense Minister Robert Hill called for a review of Australia's security policies.

On Wednesday he said there would be a shift in defense and security strategy to include closer ties with Indonesia.

"For example, expand our intelligence, sharing of intelligence, supporting them in their efforts, to ensure that terrorism is rooted out within Indonesia," he told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Speaking earlier on the broadcasting corporation's national television network, Hill also said Australian troops could be sent to Indonesia and other countries in the region.

"I don't think it's out of the question that some time in the future our forces may well be working with forces of other regional states to tackle this joint enemy," Hill said.

Australia already has more than 100 police, intelligence and defense personnel in Bali working on an international investigation with Indonesia, the United States, Britain and several other countries.

Also Wednesday, Attorney-General Daryl Williams rushed a bill to Parliament to allow the government to immediately list organizations as terrorist groups under Australian law, instead of deliberating for months.

Howard on Wednesday dismissed a U.S. media report that claims an Australian spy agency eavesdropped on members of Jamaah Islamiyah talking about hitting Australian targets in Asia only weeks before the Bali bombing.

According to the report by David Kaplan in this week's edition of U.S. News and World Report magazine, two separate U.S. intelligence sources told him the intercepted conversations were made in the weeks leading up to the Bali attack.

Howard said Australian intelligence agencies had searched their records and found no evidence of any specific threats related to Bali.

An al-Qaeda operative now in U.S. custody has told the FBI about plans to attack popular bars and nightclubs in Southeast Asia, according to classified documents, the Cable News Network reported on Tuesday.

Mohammed Mansour Jabarah told FBI interrogators that another al-Qaeda operative, Riduan Isamuddin, was planning to "conduct small bombings in bars, cafes or nightclubs frequented by westerners in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia," CNN reported.