A tightlipped US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld flew into Australia yesterday as Washington wrestled with more bad news from Iraq and ally Canberra faced new terror threats over their military alliance.
Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick arrived in Adelaide for the 20th anniversary of the Australia-US Ministerial meeting, but disappeared from any official agenda for nearly 24 hours.
Their hosts, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Defense Minister Robert Hill, spoke to reporters about the meeting as well as issues surrounding the deployment of their troops in Iraq.
But all that was known of Rumsfeld's movements before formal talks today was an unconfirmed rumor that he would lunch at a winery.
The US government is reeling under fresh revelations of horrific abuse of prisoners in Iraq after the overthrow of dictator Saddam Hussein, and opinion polls showing growing popular discontent with President George W. Bush's administration.
And as the two US politicians arrived in this quiet South Australia capital, intelligence agencies were studying a video believed to have been made by a top Southeast Asian terror suspect warning of attacks on Australia.
A balaclava-clad man, believed to be Malaysian Noordin Mohammad Top, threatened Western nations in a recording found last week in the hideout of his slain accomplice Azahari Husin, Indonesian reports said.
The speaker threatened to attack Australia along with the US, Britain and Italy, countries which he said were "enemies of Islam" for their military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Foreign Minister Downer told reporters Australia would not be intimidated.
"Noordin Top is the most wanted terrorist in Southeast Asia and no democratic country like Australia should be intimidated by a fanatic like Noordin Top," he said.
"We have to make it perfectly clear that whatever these people do, whatever threats they make, we have got the strength and courage to stand up to that.
"Australians don't expect terrorists like Noordin Top to dictate to us our foreign policies, or domestic policies."
Defense Minister Robert Hill,meanwhile, said Australia expects to be asked to stay on in southern Iraq to provide security for an extended Japanese humanitarian mission.
Australia has some 900 soldiers in Iraq as part of the US-led "coalition of the willing."
One of Australia's jobs in Iraq's Al-Muthanna province is guarding Japanese military engineers working on rebuilding damaged facilities.
"The popular view seems to be that they are likely to stay for some time yet," Hill told reporters.
"I would think they will probably ask for Australian security to help them fulfill their mission. We would need to make a decision on that by about February of next year if we were to do another rotation."
High on the agenda for the talks will be anti-terrorism cooperation, Rumsfeld indicated in an article published in the Australian newspaper.
"In the war against terrorism, no leaders have been more stalwart than the leaders of Australia," he wrote, going on to quote Prime Minister John Howard refusing to pull back from "fighting extremists."
"At this time our two countries could not be closer in our common values and attitudes towards the challenges the free world faces," Rumsfeld wrote.
Anti-war protesters have said that closeness would bring an estimated 1,000 demonstrators onto the streets of Adelaide later yesterday.
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS