SYDNEY, 5 June 2004 — Opposition leader Mark Latham reaffirmed yesterday he would pull Australian troops out of Iraq if his Labor Party won elections later this year, despite a warning from US President George W Bush that this would be “disastrous”.
“We intend to have them home by Christmas,” Latham said of the 850 soldiers stationed in and around Iraq by the conservative government of Prime Minister John Howard.
“Labor never wanted the troops there in the first place,” he said. The statement came just hours after Bush unleashed an extraordinary attack on Latham’s Iraq pullout pledge following talks with Howard in Washington. Asked during a joint press conference with Howard about the implications of Latham’s plan, Bush said: “I think that would be disastrous”.
“It would be a disastrous decision for the leader of a great country like Australia to say that ‘we’re pulling out’,” he said. “It would embolden the enemy. It would dispirit those who love freedom in Iraq. It would say that the Australian government doesn’t see the hope of a free and democratic society leading to a peaceful world,” said Bush.
Bush’s outburst was seen in Australia as a strong bid to support Howard in the run-up to parliamentary elections due in the second half of the year.
But some commentators suggested the move could backfire if voters bristle at Bush’s incursion into Australia’s domestic political debate.
“Australia is a sovereign nation, not some second-rate state in Bush’s dream of an American empire,” complained Senator Bob Brown of the Greens party.
Cavan Hogue, a former diplomat who served as Australia’s ambassador to Russia and the United Nations, agreed that Bush’s attack on his ally’s election rival was unusual.
“For an incumbent president to clearly intervene when he has the prime minister there and on what he must have known was a domestic issue is going a bit far,” he said on national radio. “It’s not considered normal.”
