Australia will ignore threats of attack by a group saying it is the European wing of al-Qaeda and blamed Spain and the Philippines for fueling the threats by giving in to terrorists and withdrawing troops from Iraq.
The Islamic Tawhid Group said in a statement posted on a Web site that it would attack Italy and Australia with "columns of rigged cars" if they did not withdraw their troops from Iraq.
"We are still investigating the authenticity and relevance of that body, but we will not take any notice of threats of that kind," Australian Prime Minister John Howard told reporters in Sydney yesterday.
"We will not parlay and negotiate with terrorists and I believe the overwhelming majority of the Australian public will agree with us," said Howard, who sent 2,000 troops to the US-led war on Iraq.
Last Wednesday, the previously unheard-of Islamic Tawhid Group also threatened Bulgaria and Poland if they did not leave Iraq.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer again said that the decision by Spain and the Philippines to withdraw troops from Iraq had encouraged terror groups.
"What they have done in these two cases is accede to the de-mands of the terrorists. And in those circumstances, if you accede to the demands of terrorists, all you do is embolden them to continue the strategy," he told Australian radio yesterday.
Downer said there were no plans to raise Australia's security-alert level from its current medium level.
"We only would increase our alert if we had information that there was credible information that there was to be some sort of attack," Downer said.
Spain's Socialist party had vowed to withdraw the country's troops from Iraq and made good on its promise after unexpectedly winning a March 11 poll, three days after 191 people were killed in coordinated train bombings blamed on Islamic militants.
The Philippines brought its troops home early to save the life of a Filipino hostage.
Howard last week defended his decision to join the war in Iraq after a report criticized Australia's intelligence agencies and their assessments of pre-war information.
He has said Australia's 850 troops in and around Iraq will stay as long as necessary. A poll has shown two-thirds of Australians support his stand.
But the opposition Labor party, polling neck-and-neck with the eight-year-old conservative government, has pledged to bring troops home by Christmas if it wins office in a cliffhanger election tipped for October.
Labor's foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said Australia should concentrate more on helping countries like the Philippines fight terror rather than criticizing them.
"I don't know if this latest diplomatic fusillade from our foreign minister helps," Rudd told Australian radio yesterday.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS