Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard yesterday was to meet with US business leaders, spy chiefs and the top US diplomat to cement strong ties with “great mate” America after getting a warm welcome at the White House.
US President Barack Obama declared Monday that the US has “no stronger ally than Australia” when he received Gillard, who also is to address a joint session of US Congress during her weeklong US visit.
The two leaders pledged mutual cooperation in the increasingly important Asia-Pacific region and in the war in Afghanistan, where Australia’s 1,550-troop deployment is the US’ largest non-NATO partner. They also pledged a united front against violence in the Middle East.
Yesterday, she was to address the US Chamber of Commerce, meet with US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and mark the centennial of International Women’s Day. She was to meet in the early afternoon with US intelligence chiefs.
As Australia’s first woman prime minister, Gillard is making her inaugural official visit to Washington since ousting her predecessor, Kevin Rudd, in a party leadership challenge last year.
Gillard and Obama showed an easy rapport on Monday, trading jokes on the “love-it-or-hate-it” Australian breakfast spread Vegemite, and even the convict origin of many of Australia’s first migrants from Britain.
Gillard described the US and Australia as “great mates.” Obama identified a shared commitment to democracy and a pioneer spirit as underpinning their alliance, which may deepen as Washington looks to strengthen its engagement in the Asia-Pacific, an economically thriving region where both nations eye China’s rising stature with a degree of caution.
Alongside Obama, Gillard said: “There is so much more to do together in the future, including cooperating as America looks at its force posture.”
She did not elaborate.
Thom Woodroofe, an Australia-based associate fellow with the Asia Society, said Gillard’s visit showed the continued centrality of the US alliance to Australian foreign policy thinking and would be keenly watched back home, although he anticipated no major results from it. He said that Gillard would be the fourth Australian prime minister to address a joint session of Congress.
After that address today, she is to travel to New York, where she meets with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and visits the New York Stock Exchange.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the