Australian leader under attack for criticizing senator
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By Rod McGuirk
Associated Press
February 15, 2007
CANBERRA, Australia -- Prime Minister John Howard's fracas with Senator Barack Obama of Illinois provoked a third straight day of political recriminations yesterday, as the Australian leader told parliament that the pledge by the Democratic presidential candidate to withdraw troops from Iraq would only invite more bloodshed.
Howard, a staunch ally of President Bush's global war against terror, suffered blistering attacks from members of the center-left Labor Party, who want to bring Australian troops home from Iraq.
Howard on Sunday told an Australian TV network that Al Qaeda would be praying for victories by Obama and other Democrats. His comments were made one day after Obama, who has introduced legislation to withdraw US troops by March 31, 2008, entered the race for the Democratic nomination.
The Conservative leader yesterday refused Labor's demands to describe an exit strategy from the Iraq war. Deadlines for withdrawal like Obama's, he said, were "inviting the terrorists in Iraq to persist with the destabilization and the mayhem and the bloodshed in the certain knowledge that ultimately the nerve will be lost."
The prime minister, who is up for re election later this year, has accused Labor leader Kevin Rudd of being "too gutless" to acknowledge that a premature withdrawal of US troops would be "a rolled gold catastrophe for the security interests of our own nation."
Rudd, who has vowed to pull out most of Australia's 1,400 troops stationed in and around Iraq if he wins election this year, said a step-by-step US withdrawal is the only way forward.
"The staged withdrawal of US troops in the only way . . . in which you bring political pressure to bear on the Sunnis and Shi'ites who are currently ripping each other apart," Rudd told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.
John Hart, a specialist on US politics at Australian National University, said he suspected Howard had "gone too far" with his criticism of Obama .
Labor has accused Howard of jeopardizing Australia's 56-year-old bilateral alliance with the United States.
This turns the tables on the government, which in the lead-up to the 2004 elections accused Labor of being anti-American for opposing the Iraq war.
Hart said Howard was also hurt by Obama's rebuttal that Australia had made only a token contribution to the coalition force in Iraq.
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