Australia to send troops to Afghanistan

NEW DEPLOYMENT: The prime minister said that 150 special forces soldiers will be sent to Afghanistan by September to help counter a recent resurgence in violence

AP , CANBERRA

Australia will send 150 elite troops to Afghanistan by September to fight a growing tide of insurgent-led violence spearheaded by al-Qaeda and remnants of the Taliban, the prime minister said yesterday.

The troops would comprise Special Air Service Regiment soldiers, commandos and support personnel, Prime Minister John Howard said.

"It's fair to say that the progress that's been made in the establishment of a legitimate government in Afghanistan has come under increasing attack and pressure from the Taliban in particular and some elements of al-Qaeda," Howard told reporters.

"We have received at a military level requests from both the United States and others and also the government of Afghanistan and we have therefore decided ... to dispatch a special forces task group," he added.

One year

The troops would be in place by September and remain in the country for a year, he said.

The Australian defense department would also consider sending up to 200 troops as part of a reconstruction team to Afghanistan early next year, he said.

Australia sent about 1,500 military personnel, including 150 Special Air Service troops, to support the US-led war that ousted the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in late 2001, but currently has only one soldier there involved in mine clearance.

Howard said that the new deployment would have a separate Australian national command, although the task group would be under the operational control of US forces.

`Preserve'

"We think its important that the progress made in Afghanistan is preserved and consolidated and that the resurgence of violence and the resurgence of attempts by the Taliban to undermine the government of that country are not successful," he said.

The US-trained Afghan army now numbers 26,000 and regularly fights alongside troops from the 20,000-strong US-led coalition. A separate NATO-led force of 8,000 soldiers is responsible for security in Kabul and the nation's north and west. But the forces in Afghanistan are struggling to contain unprecedented fighting by insurgents that has left more than 700 people dead in three months and threatened to sabotage three years of progress toward peace.

US and Afghan officials have warned violence is likely to worsen before legislative elections in September.

Australia has resisted pressure from its allies in the so-called "coalition of the willing," NATO and Afghanistan to provide more military support since it withdrew most of its forces in late 2002.

Howard said Australia was now better placed to send soldiers because the army's peace keeping mission in East Timor had ended and was winding down in the Solomon Islands.

The announcement comes before the prime minister's departure tomorrow for a 10-day visit to the US and Britain.

Howard has denied media reports that the UK wants Australia to play a greater role in Iraq, saying the current commitment of 1,400 troops in and around that country was appropriate and no official request for more had come from London.

The opposition Labor Party has long called for more Australian troops in Afghanistan to fight terrorism but urges a withdrawal from Iraq.

China's word games

By Charles Hong

Orville Schell ("Buying America, Chinese-style, is what's good for the gander," July 8, Page 9) suggests that China must be permitted to invest abroad freely. This suggestion is risky without knowing China's true intentions.

China has flooded the US with its products from A to Z. Many of these "Made in China" products are too cheap to believe. This is like opium to US consumers. The end result is that products that are "Made in the USA" have become a rare species. For fair trade to occur, China must raise the minimum wage for its workers and allow the yuan to float freely.

China wants the EU to lift its arms embargo so that it can buy advanced weapons freely. Is China afraid of another Tiananmen uprising or a possible military attack by Taiwan or Japan? What is China's intention in pointing 700 ballistic missiles at Taiwan and increasing military budgets every year?

Additionally, why does China prohibit Taiwan from joining world organizations, including the World Health Organization, even as an observer?

China has enjoyed too much freedom abroad, but restricts freedoms domestically. To become a great country, China must respect human rights, accept democracy and peace, and leave Taiwan alone.

China now wants to buy and sell the US. Nobody knows for sure China's intentions in buying US corporations. An apparent reason is that China is playing word games. The takeover of IBM's PC division will make the world believe that whatever China does is "PC" -- or politically correct. If China gains control of Unocal, the US will have no calories (U-no-cal) or energy. The takeover of Maytag will make you call "Mayday!" ("Tag" is German for day).

Charles Hong

Columbus, Ohio

Taiwan's sovereignty unclear

By A.M. Cambronne

I am both deeply appalled and bothered by Chen Ching-chih's editorial ("Taiwan belongs to the Taiwanese," July 7, page 8). It is not the basic argument that I contest but the presentation itself. I find it absolutely hypocritical of Chen to denounce an anonymous US professor for "Having strived to teach his Chinese students how to think rather than what to think," when I would dare say that the improper manner with which he editorializes fails to do justice to himself, the reader and the anecdote.

Furthermore, while I quite agree with his interpretation of temporal events, as all history is interpretive, I would contest his analysis of the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty.

Signed in September 1951 by 46 nations, its stipulations went into effect on April 28, 1951. The purpose of the treaty was to resolve World War II, not Taiwanese independence issues. The document itself relies heavily upon the official UN Charter of 1945 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. The document officially states that Japan was to withdraw from Korea, Taiwan, the Kuril islands, the Pescadores, the Spratly islands, Antarctica and portions of Sakhalin and other islands adjacent to it.

Neither the Republic of China nor the People's Republic of China signed the treaty, as neither was invited to the conference. There was a second treaty between Taiwan and Japan in 1952, the Treaty of Peace with Japan that details the withdrawal of Japanese forces. Both documents set guidelines for repatriation of prisoners of war and renounce future military aggression.

The treaty does not explicitly clarify in any way, shape or form Taiwan's sovereignty, but merely makes clear Japan's withdrawal.

While I would highly espouse Taiwanese autonomy, you cannot point to documents such as the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the Treaty of Peace with Japan nor Article 77b of the UN Charter for a resolution of the matter. When you misinterpret a legal document, you set a dangerous precedent for further abuse and misinterpretation of Taiwan's legal documents.

A.M. Cambronne

United States

Terrorism not a `nuisance'

By Miguel Guanipa

Upon reading about the bloodied victims staggering toward safety following the terrorist bombing in London, I had a chance to recall the recent displays of righteous indignation from mostly US senators -- mostly Democrats -- at reports that prisoners in Guantanamo Bay were being subjected to sleep depravation. I myself was very apprehensive at how awful it must have been for those poor terror suspects to not even be afforded the chance to eat a properly cooked meal.

My thoughts subsequently wandered off toward recollections of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and I experienced a renewed sense of shock at the thought of US soldiers actually daring to place a pair of panties on a prisoner's head. Further on I reflected upon the many audacious declarations from progressives in academia intimating a certain empathy for the insurgents' heroic resistance in Iraq.

I thought of the legion utterances from the intellectual Hollywood elite and liberal pundits condemning US President George W. Bush for cautioning that terrorism not be treated as the mere nuisance that another presidential hopeful had earlier suggested it was.

Eventually I lulled myself into a peaceful slumber, partly induced by the comforting notion that we are simply witnessing the effects of what is at root, a mere social malady of negligible proportions. Nothing a little therapy and diplomacy wouldn't remedy.

Miguel Guanipa

Whitinsville, Massachusetts

China tilts to Russia to counter Uncle Sam

By Wang Kun-yi

Last week, Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a "China-Russia Joint Statement on the 21st Century World Order." With this, China is returning to a strategy of depending on a single ally. But the deeper significance of this statement is that it contributes to China's emerging strategy of unilateral threats, a bilateral defense and multilateral solutions to problems it sees in the international situation.

The single-ally strategy was chosen by Mao Zedong after the Korean war, when China joined hands with the Soviet Union to counter the US threat by making all of China's defenses and development dependent on the Soviet Union. After the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s, Mao drew a line between China and the Soviet Union. In the late 1960s and 1970s China turned toward a "one line of defense" and a "one great defense area" strategy.

Mao felt that to stop Soviet hegemony from spreading across the globe, China should help build a global "front line" alliance with Japan, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the US, and also unite the surrounding countries in one "defense area."

After 1982, China no longer emphasized this anti-Soviet alliance. Instead, it adopted a strategy of keeping the US and the Soviet Union at an equal distance.

In the 1990s, following the end of the Cold War, China adopted another strategic direction in its pursuit of a Great Nation strategy -- the circle, line, area and point approach. The circle meant building friendly relations with the surrounding countries, the line meant taking a friendly approach toward the line of nations willing to assist China's development through financial and technical assistance, the area meant the area that would share in China's prosperity when its economy is fully developed, and the point meant the competitive and cooperative relationship China is forced to maintain with the US following its post-Cold War rise to unipolar hegemony.

Against the backdrop of this Chinese strategy, the US and Japan held a security meeting in February this year during which the two nations identified security in the Taiwan Strait as a joint strategic concern. The reaffirmation by the US and Japan of their military alliance made China feel a new urgency to counter the US threat.

Hu then returned to Mao's strategy of depending on a single ally, as if that is once again the only way to handle US threats. To deal with the unilateral threat posed by the US, Hu chose to embrace Russia and build a closer strategic partnership between the two nations. Last week's statement firmly established an anti-US bilateral defensive relationship.

In addition to repeating the two countries' opposition to the US' invasion of Iraq, China and Russia's joint statement also recognizes that the recent theoretical developments relating to the UN system have introduced concepts such as global governance, global democracy, comprehensive security and world citizenship.

Given the strengthening and reform envisioned for the UN, the organization stands a greater chance of providing multilateral solutions to global conflicts. China's decision to pin its hopes on the UN to help resolve potential conflict between China and the US is therefore dictated by necessity.

History shows that China has never gained any advantage by allying with Russia. This time around, China has already experienced setbacks, by making big concessions on Sino-Russian border issues. It will be interesting to see if Hu will lose even more when China moves closer to Russia to oppose the US.

Wang Kun-yi is an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies at Tamkang University.