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'Bin Laden' Threats Won't Derail Australia's Support For U.S.
Patrick Goodenough
Pacific Rim Bureau Chief
"Australia won't be blackmailed by Osama bin Laden or anybody else in its foreign policy," said Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.
"We will stand up for the things we believe in. We will stand by our friends and our allies and our neighbors in our determination to crush international terrorism," he said.
Downer also said the recorded comments underlined "the vicious, bloodthirsty nature of the terrorists we are dealing with, and it reinforces our determination to make sure that we stand up against these people."
Australians would not be "intimidated, in relation to the policies we pursue, by threats from terrorists," was Prime Minister John Howard's response, in comments to the federal parliament.
The tape, aired by the al-Jazeera Arabic television network, hails recent terrorist attacks including the Oct. 12 Bali nightclub bombing and the murder of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan on Oct. 28.
The speaker threatened the U.S., as well as some of its allies by name, among them Australia.
"We warned Australia before not to join in the war in Afghanistan, and against its despicable effort to separate East Timor," he says, according to a translation of the original Arabic, provided by the U.S. government.
"It ignored the warning until it woke up to the sounds of explosions in Bali ..." he added.
About 90 Australians were killed in the attack on the Indonesian resort island.
The man said to be bin Laden warned America's allies that they would be targets of fresh attacks if they continued to back the "biggest butchers of the era."
"You will be killed just as you kill, and will be bombed just as you bomb," he said. "Expect more that will further distress you."
Australia has been a staunch supporter of the U.S.-led campaign war against al Qaeda and related terrorists in Afghanistan and elsewhere. It is also likely to participate in a military campaign against Iraq, should one take place.
The East Timor reference relates to Australia's leading role in a mission to protect the people of the mostly Roman Catholic territory from Indonesian military-backed militias who went on a killing spree after East Timorese voted for independence from the world's largest Islamic country.
U.S. officials have been quoted as saying the voice on the tape is probably that of bin Laden.
For almost a year now, the question of whether the arch-terrorist had survived either the U.S.-led bombardment in Afghanistan or reputed illness has prompted considerable speculation around the world.
This is not the first time bin Laden, if it is him, has portrayed Australia as an enemy of Islam.
Last November, in a videotaped address also broadcast by al-Jazeera, bin Laden added Australia's intervention in East Timor to a list of events of the last century he said proved that the West was trying to wipe out Islam.
"The crusader Australian forces were on Indonesian shores, and in fact they landed to separate East Timor, which is part of the Islamic world," he said.
"Therefore, we should view events not as separate links, but as links in a long series of conspiracies, a war of annihilation [against Islam] in the true sense of the word."
Bin Laden in that recording also cited the situation in Chechnya, Iraq, Bosnia, Somalia, Kashmir and the Palestinian areas as other manifestations of the anti-Islam "crusade."
Bin Laden has long used the term "crusader" - originating from the bloody European campaign 900 years to wrest control of the Holy Land from Muslims - as a derogatory one for Christians, particularly in reference to U.S. forces in the Islamic Middle East.
The Saudi-born terrorist in February 1998 launched what he called the World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders.
SE Asia Attacks
While the speaker on the tape aired by al-Jazeera this week referred to the Bali bombing, he did not actually claim responsibility for it.
Indonesian police on Wednesday for the first time categorically tied the bombing - which killed around 190 people, mostly foreign tourists - to Jemaah Islamiah, a southeast Asian terrorist network closely tied to al Qaeda.
JI has long been suspected as the likeliest culprit, but the apparent confirmation came in the questioning of detained suspect Amrozi, an Indonesian who owned the van in which the bomb was located when it exploded outside busy nightspots.
Amrozi told police he had been recruited into the bomb plot by a man named Imam Samudra, a senior JI member wanted for involvement in other terror attacks in Indonesia, including a spate of bombings at Christian churches in December 2000.
Samudra's whereabouts are unknown, as are those of his accomplice and alleged JI leader Hambali, an Indonesian cleric with direct and close ties to top al Qaeda operatives.
A third suspected leading JI figure, Abu Bakar Bashir, remains in Indonesian police custody, refusing to cooperate in questioning about his role in previous attacks, including the year 2000 church bombings.
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