FED: Biden warns Australia is an al-Qaeda target
By Peter Veness11 Mar 2009 5:45 PM
Subject: FED: Biden warns Australia is an al-Qaeda target FED: Biden warns Australia is an al-Qaeda target
CANBERRA, March 11 AAP - US Vice-President Joe Biden has warned Australia is a target for al-Qaeda terrorists.
A foreign policy expert, Mr Biden told a meeting of NATO chiefs in Brussels that he believed the war in Afghanistan was key to blocking attacks from al-Qaeda, which has been significantly splintered and weakened since the September 11, 2001 attacks it is blamed for.
"It is from that area (Afghanistan) that al-Qaeda and its extremist allies are regenerating in conceiving new atrocities aimed at the people around the world from Afghanistan, Pakistan and India to the United States, Europe and Australia," he said.
Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon did not immediately comment on Mr Biden's warning.
Australia has about 1,000 troops in Afghanistan, most of them in the volatile southern province of Oruzgan.
It has been widely anticipated Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will be asked to send more troops when he meets US President Barack Obama later this month.
Michael McKinley, a terrorism expert who teaches at the Australian National University, believes the request from Mr Obama will be largely symbolic.
"I suspect (the request) has already been sounded out," Dr McKinley told AAP.
Alongside its surge of about 17,000 troops into Afghanistan, the US is also raising the possibility of talking with "moderate" forces within the Taliban.
Part of the problem in speaking to the Taliban is its fractious state. Neither the Taliban nor al-Qaeda are the monolithic forces they once were.
If the US speaks with Taliban fighters outside Kabul it will almost certainly have no effect on Pashtun nationalists rebelling in southern areas and vice versa.
On the controversial plan to talk to the Taliban, Mr Biden said "it is worth engaging".
"The idea of what concessions would be made is well beyond the scope of my being able to answer, except to say that whatever is initiated will have to be ultimately initiated by the Afghan government, and will have to be such that it would not undermine a legitimate Afghan government," Mr Biden told reporters in Brussels.
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FED: Biden warns Australia is an al-Qaeda target