Preemptive threat will damage Australian interests in Asia: Analysts

Preemptive threat will damage Australian interests in Asia: Analysts

Jack Taylor, Agence France-Presse, Sydney, Australia

Prime Minister John Howard's brawl with Asia over his support for preemptive strikes against terrorists overseas is the latest in a series of bruising rows which analysts say will damage Australia's long-term interests in the region.

At a time Australia needs to rebuild already strained ties with its neighbors in a hypersensitive security environment, Howard is once again seen to have created a furious backlash with potentially damaging consequences.

"I think it is very damaging to Australia's interests in Asia because we have the history of being a white colonial power with a white Australia policy," said Elaine Thompson, a professor of politics and international relations at Sydney's University of New South Wales.

"Howard's outrageous statement is just going to reinforce the view of us as an alien."

Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines -- the nations whose cooperation Howard most needed after the Bali bombing -- have lined up to express their anger at Howard's statement.

They are also the countries whose economies will be hurt most by Canberra's recent warnings to Australians against holiday travel in the region.

Nearly half of the more than 190 people killed in the Oct. 12 Bali bombing were Australian.

Australia's recent heavy-handed anti-terrorist crackdown in which police and intelligence agents raided the homes of Indonesian Muslims further fueled Asian resentment.

All four nations had already taken a dim view of Howard a few years ago over his apparently ambivalent attitude towards former MP Pauline Hanson, and what was widely seen as a racist campaign by her One Nation Party to halt Asian immigration.

Howard was the last senior Australian politician to condemn her.

Indonesia has also barely forgiven Australia for sending troops to East Timor in a bid to end the violence by Jakarta- backed militia in September 1999 after a vote for independence.

Then in August 2001 came the so-called Tampa incident in which Australia turned away a shipload of Muslim refugees and introduced a tough policy of refusing to allow asylum seekers to land on the Australian mainland.

Howard sought the help of Indonesian President Megawati Soekarnoputri but she refused even to answer his phone calls. He was able to exploit his government's tough stance on illegal immigration in his successful campaign to win the re-election later that year and was accused by Hanson of stealing her policies.

Glen Barclay, a senior academic specializing in international relations at Canberra's Australian National University, said the election was to a very great extent a racist election, "wrapped up in nonsense about border protection."

"Since then there has been the war on terrorism, which again shapes up as aggression against Islamic countries," he told AFP.

"But Howard's statement in which he was considering Australia should have the right to make preemptive strikes on neighboring countries a la Israel's Ariel Sharon was quite incredible, a ludicrous statement."

Barclay said Howard's government appeared determined to reverse in every possible way the pro-Asia policies of the former Labor government of prime minister Paul Keating.

"The consequences of all of this are likely to show up in a diminishing capacity of Australian businesses to operate in Asia where we are already working under quite significant difficulties," he said.

Australia was at a disadvantage by not being a member of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), and was now facing exclusion from a China-ASEAN free trade area, which will in economic terms become the largest preferential trading arrangement in the world.

Thompson said she believed Howard's comments about terrorist threats were playing to domestic politics.

"There is no rational reason to try and frighten Australians in the way they have been in talking up threats except to play to a domestic electorate," she said.

Howard denied on Tuesday that his comments about possible preemptive action against terrorists overseas had damaged Australia's relations with its Asian neighbors and said he did not resile from them.