SYDNEY, 10 December 2002 — Australia is more likely to be targeted for terrorist attack if it joins a US-led assault on Iraq, one of Australia’s leading experts on terrorism warned yesterday. The director of terrorism studies at Canberra’s Australian National University, Clive Williams, also told a parliamentary committee that US and Israeli diplomatic missions inside Australia would be the most likely targets. “The highest value targets for an Al-Qaeda operation are US diplomatic and Israeli diplomatic premises, probably more the consulates than the embassies because those are harder targets,” he said. The committee is examining Australia’s ability to respond to a terrorist attack in the light of the Oct. 12 Bali bombings which claimed more than 190 lives, almost 90 of them Australians. Williams told the hearing in Canberra that the audio tape recently attributed to terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden in which he mentioned Australia was an “ominous” development. He had attended a regional meeting which was told that Australia was now being mentioned in mosques as being one of the countries aligned against the Muslim world, an issue which he described as “disquieting.” (AFP)