Aust
and US ties closer
AUSTRALIAN and US officials recently agreed to cooperate on a
missile defence system, to improve interopability and to develop
a joint combined military training capability in Australia.
The announcements came after Defence Minister Robert Hill and
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer met with their US counterparts,
Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
in Washington earlier this month.
Mr Rumsfeld said our two countries have signed a memorandum of
understanding, pledging to work together on developing a system
to defend our respective countries from missile attack.
“By creating a training environment in Australia to test and evaluate
our forces in a wide range of scenarios, our countries should
be better able to intergrate our military capabilities,” he said.
Minister Hill said that Australia will work together with the
US to identiy specific missile projects to work on, and described
the project as a long term investment”.
