Labor Party vows to focus on Asia if it wins elections

Labor Party vows to focus on Asia if it wins elections

SYDNEY, Australia (Agencies): The opposition Labor Party would
put the Asia Pacific region back at the center of Australian
foreign policy if it wins elections this year, in contrast to the
government's focus on the United States, leader Kim Beazley said.

In a major foreign policy speech, Beazley said strengthening
ties with Asia were the most important foreign policy issue
facing Australia.

"Engagement with the region is central to Labor's
international approach because it is central to our survival and
prosperity as a nation," Beazley told the Asia Australia
Institute in Sydney on Thursday night.

Beazley's speech offered a clear alternative to Prime Minister
John Howard's conservative government which has placed relations
with the United States as the central plank of its foreign
policy.

"This is not only because of the strategic, economic and
diplomatic power of the United States. But of equal, if not more
significance, are the values and aspirations we share," Howard
said last month.

Howard's speech was the strongest repudiation to date of
Australian policy throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s
which placed Asia and in particular, Indonesia, at the forefront.

Many foreign policy analysts still believe Asia, China and
Indonesia should be the main focus of Australian policy.

Howard's government is seeking a third term at elections
expected in late November.

The government had trailed Labor in all major polls throughout
the year, until the past week when Howard's refusal to allow a
boat load of mostly Afghan asylum seekers into the country
sparked a surge in his popularity and the government's approval
rating.

Analysts now see the election as too close to call.

Beazley attacked Howard's approach to international relations,
claiming the prime minister's image of Australian foreign policy
seems "frozen circa 1966."

"Foreign policy for an Australian prime minister cannot be a
hobby based around a visit to Lords (cricket club in London) and
a walk through the White House rose garden every few years," he
said.

Australia had to broaden and deepen links at all levels in the
Asia Pacific and secure full participation in significant
regional forums and processes, he said.

"Our greatest international challenges and opportunities arise
from the transformation of East Asia from an economic backwater
after World War II to one of the world's powerhouses. Our
security interests are inextricably linked with the security of
the Asia Pacific region," he said.

Meanwhile, Australia's Health Minister Michael Wooldridge
announced on Friday he was retiring from Parliament at elections
later this year to spend more time with his young family.

An emotional Wooldridge, 44, told reporters his reasons were
personal, not political.

In another development, hundreds of unwanted asylum seekers
faced at least another three days at sea on an Australian troop
ship as Howard on Friday pressed home the political advantage of
his refusal to accept them.

The 433 asylum seekers, the center of a diplomatic standoff
between Australia, Indonesia and Norway when they were rescued
from a sinking Indonesian ferry, are on their way to Papua New
Guinea under a plan to resettle them in other countries.

An Australian defense department official said the Australian
navy ship carrying the boat people was not expected to arrive in
the Papua New Guinea capital of Port Moresby before Monday.

Papua New Guinea has put in place a high security operation
for the length of the HMAS Manoora's stay.

Foreign Minister John Pundari has vowed none of the asylum
seekers will be allowed to leave the ship while it is in Port
Moresby's Fairfax Harbor.

How long the Manoora remains moored off Port Moresby before
its human cargo is cleared for the next leg of their journey will
be determined by a complex court case which could see Canberra
forced to accept them after all.