Indonesia would be entitled to launch a pre-emptive strike against terrorists in Australia threatening the country, if Canberra refused to take action against them, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said yesterday.
His comments came amid a political dispute over the wisdom of Prime Minister John Howard's dictum that pre-emptive strikes against terrorist bases abroad were permissible as a last resort in the protection of Australia.
The opposition Labor Party, which hopes to deny Howard's conservative coalition a fourth term at a general election next month, has ruled out approving pre-emptive strikes.
Downer, speaking on local radio, said he would expect another country to take pre-emptive action if terrorists in Australia represented a direct threat.
"If the Indonesians rang us up and said, `there's a terrorist group in the Kimberleys who are planning to launch an attack on Kupang,' and we said, `well, we don't really care, that's your problem, pal, and we're not going to do anything about it,' and they sent an F-16 over and bombed the terrorist group, you could understand that," Downer said.
Labor leader Mark Latham, described Downer's comments as "horrifying" and evidence he was unfit for the job.
"He's made a lot of errors in recent times as foreign minister, I just don't think he's fit for the job," Latham said. "I find it horrifying that the foreign minister would be publicly talking about circumstances where it is understandable, if another country attacked Australia."
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS