An Australian decision to send an extra 450 troops to Iraq to protect Japanese engineers there was not taken in exchange for a free trade deal with Tokyo, Prime Minister John Howard said yesterday after critics questioned his motives.
Howard's decision this week went against a two-year-old promise not to increase Australian military strength in Iraq. The prime minister said he made it after personal approaches from Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and British leader Tony Blair.
The 450 troops will replace withdrawing Dutch soldiers in safeguarding Japanese military engineers who are carrying out humanitarian work in southern Iraq. Australia has about 900 troops in the Middle East, but only 300 in Iraq.
The opposition Australian Greens Party claimed Howard offered the extra troops ahead of a planned visit to Japan in April as part of a strategy to convince Tokyo to agree to a free trade deal.
But Howard said that neither a free trade pact nor any other economic trade-offs were discussed with Koizumi.
"Australia will continue, separate and apart from this decision, to negotiate with Japan on things of that kind," Howard told Japanese public broadcaster NHK in a television interview. "But in no way did I say to the Japanese government that if we do this, will you do something else -- it's not like that."
Japan, Australia's biggest export market, would not be asked to contribute to the A$300 million (US$236 million) a year cost of keeping the additional troops in Iraq, Howard said.
"There is only one source of remuneration for Australian troops and that is from the Australian government acting on behalf of the Australian people," Howard said in the interview.
The Howard government has always insisted that its foreign policy is separate from trade considerations.
However, many see a free trade pact between Australia and the US as Washington's reward to Canberra for sending 2,000 troops to Iraq.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
RSS