Battling Terrorism - Howard focuses on terrorism

Australian PM praises Canada's Afghan role Also calls U.S. `power for good'

in the world

May 19, 2006. 01:00 AM

NATIONAL AFFAIRS WRITER

OTTAWA—Australian Prime Minister John Howard warned Canada of the need to be vigilant against the threat of terrorism. "Terrorism will not be defeated by nuancing our foreign policy," Howard told a joint session of the House of Commons and the Senate yesterday.

"Terrorism will not be defeated by rolling ourselves into a small ball and going into a corner and imagining that somehow or other we will escape notice," said Howard, fresh from a visit to the White House.

Terrorism is a menace that ...

knows no boundaries, no morality and no rationality and defies predictability, he said.

"Terrorists oppose us not because of what we have done. They oppose us because of who we are and what we believe in," he said, adding that intelligence has shown that Australia was a target for terrorism even before the attacks on the United States of Sept. 11, 2001.

"Terrorism will only be defeated by a combination of strong intervention, military action where appropriate, and importantly, the spread of democracy, particularly in Islamic countries."

Howard, the first Australian prime minister to address Parliament since 1944, praised Canada for its military contribution in Afghanistan just a day after the Commons voted 149 to 145 to extend its mission there.

His three-day official visit marks a public recognition of a close political affinity with Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Sources say the two leaders bonded after attending a conservative gathering in Washington last summer and one of Howard's chief strategists later contributed advice to Harper's election campaign.

Yesterday, Howard praised the United States for its role in the world, saying Australia is an unapologetic friend and ally. The United States, he said, "has been a remarkable power for good in the world."

"The decency, and hope that the power and purpose of the United States represents to the world is something that we should deeply appreciate," he added.

Those who want a reduced American role in global affairs, should be careful, "because a retreating America will leave a more vulnerable world," he said.

Australian political scientist Anna Yeatman, who holds the Canada research chair in social theory and policy at the University of Alberta, said she saw Howard's address as "very staged and very deliberate — particularly on the Canadian presence in Afghanistan."

Yeatman said there is a tendency to see Canada's role in Afghanistan in terms of peacekeeping instead of as part of a shared military strategy involving the presence of the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan, and perhaps in the future Iran.

"He was on message, and doing Harper's job for him," she told the Star. "It's very significant that he said that the most important priority is the war on terror, just after having come from the United States."

Since Howard was first elected in 1996, Harper said, Australia's taxes had gone down, productivity had gone up and the country's net debt had been paid off.

Conservative MP Scott Reid (Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington), who lived in Australia for two years, said there are a number of ways Howard represents a model for the Harper government.

Just as the Conservative party is an alliance of Progressive Conservatives and Reformers, Reid said Howard leads a coalition of the urban Liberal party and the rural National party.

"(Howard) has provided stable government, low taxes, and an unapologetic sense of where Australia is in the world," he said. "Those things are not so dissimilar ... to what we are talking about doing."