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CHANGE:
PM John Howard says that if the ADF does not fight terror
overseas then it is likely to become a menace in Australia.
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Photo:
CPL Robert Nyffenegger
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By
David Sibley
If the ADF does not fight terror overseas then it’s likely to
become a menace in Australia, according to Prime Minister John
Howard.
In his exclusive interview with the Service newspapers, Mr Howard
said that if a member of the ADF had doubts about serving in the
international Coalition against terror, he would tell that person
the terrorist threat was different to past threats.
“It’s very lethal and if we don’t fight it where we can, distant
from Australia, it’s likely, in time, to become a greater menace
in our own country,” he said.
“I think the great value of fighting in, say, Afghanistan, is
that if we can support the democratically elected government of
Afghanistan and demonstrate to the world the democratic alternative,
in the face of terrorist conduct, can survive, I think it’s a
huge reminder that terrorism can be beaten.
“But nobody should imagine that terrorism is going to go away
in a hurry and it has to be fought wherever we find it. “I certainly
believe that what’s happening with the Coalition operations in
both Afghanistan and Iraq are very important.”
Mr Howard agreed that when he became Prime Minister in 1996, there
was no way known he could have foreseen the events that led Australia
into the war.
“I would not have expected we would have been engaged in so many
of these operations and it just happened - I certainly did not
want it or expect it,” he said. Before the Interfet operation
in East Timor in 1999, the ADF had gained experience through peacekeeping
operations in Rwanda, Somalia, Namibia and Cambodia.
“I did not envisage a role in the war against terror because it
hadn’t started,” he said. “...We changed the policy towards East
Timor, East Timor was then part of Indonesia - there was no prospect
of any ballot or otherwise to change that.
“We had a policy of hands off, non-intervention policy in the
Pacific - those last two policies my Government changed, rightly
in my opinion, and the war on terror came upon us.”
Mr Howard said it was not new for Australian forces to go overseas
to defend the nation as part of an allied effort. “I think that’s
a misunderstanding of Australian military history,” he said.
He said there would also be an ongoing need to have peacekeeping-type
operations for situations such as the crisis in the Solomon Islands
in 2003.
“I imagine we will have a lot of those in the future, therefore
we need a sharp edge capacity as well as a broad edge capacity,”
he said.
