Howard under fire for excluding Muslim radicals from talks
CANBERRA, Aug 23: Australian Prime Minister John Howard met Muslim leaders on Tuesday to try to prevent the kind of attacks that have hit other Iraq war allies, but came under fire for excluding radical groups from the talks.
Mr Howard called the conference in the wake of the July London bombings by British-born Muslims, fearing that Australia could face similar violence from disaffected members of its small Islamic community.
He told the 14 Muslim delegates at Parliament House here that he approached the meeting in a spirit of goodwill and friendship but was concerned that some in the Islamic community encouraged violence and hatred.
“There are some who do give comfort and aid, and encouragement, and succour to terrorism,” he said.
“And our responsibility is to work together to identify the causes of that, to prevent the spread of it and to do everything we can to enlist the great mainstream of the Islamic community in Australia.”
The prime minister has been criticised for leaving more radical Islamic leaders out of the meeting, but said he did not want to “provide a forum for fanatics”.
Ameer Ali, president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, said he would have preferred radicals to be included so “we can expose their views and counter their views”.
Another conference delegate, Mohammed Taha Alsalami of the local Iraqi Muslim Council, told The Australian newspaper that Australia had a “real problem with extremists” and urgent action was needed to prevent an explosion of violence.
A “tiny minority of religious zealots and fanatics” was preaching a doctrine of hatred and violence in Australia, he said.
Some 300,000 Muslims make up just 1.5 percent of Australia’s population of 20 million.
Australian security officials said recently they believed up to 60 Islamic militants were operating in terror cells in the country and that an attack on an Australian target was all but inevitable.
Another group at the meeting, the Islamic Council of New South Wales, issued a statement saying Australia’s military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan was the primary cause of alienation of the Muslim community.
“We insist that the current debate concerning terrorism should be correctly discussed within its global context,” said acting president Ali Roude, whose council represents 40 different groups.
Australia is a staunch ally of the US-led “war on terrorism” and contributed troops to the US-led invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq. It still has some 900 soldiers in Iraq and has pledged to deploy a new force of 190 troops in Afghanistan next month.
The terror bombings which killed more than 50 people last month in London, capital of Iraq war ally Britain, have led Howard’s government to embark on a major review of Australia’s counter-terrorism capabilities.
It is examining tough new anti-terror legislation and security measures, with Mr Howard dismissing concerns of civil rights groups by saying the main human right is to stay alive.
The man tipped to succeed him as prime minister, Treasurer Peter Costello, urged radical Muslim clerics to leave Australia if they did not share the country’s values.
“If you are looking for a country that practises theocracy, shariat — which is anti-Western — there are those countries in the world...you will be happy there. But you won’t be happy in Australia,” he was quoted as saying by The Australian.
The new anti-terror tactics will be discussed at a meeting next month between Mr Howard and leaders of Australia’s state government. —AFP
