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Clarke sez greater threat to Australian than US elections
A former White House counter-terrorism adviser says the Australian election campaign is at more risk of an al-Qaeda terrorist attack than the United States presidential election. Richard Clarke, an adviser to four presidents, said Labor leader Mark Latham's pledge to bring Australian troops home from Iraq by Christmas meant there were differences in policy between the two sides of politics which al-Qaeda could seek to exploit. Mr Clarke said it was unlikely that al-Qaeda would attempt to influence the US election in November because it was unclear what effect a terror attack would have on voters or candidates. But he said the Australian election a month earlier could be an attractive target. "Australia is a bit more like the Spanish case, where you do have one party saying get out and another party staying the course, and the party in power is the one wanting to stay the course," Mr Clarke told ABC television's Lateline program. "That's much closer to the situation that we saw in Spain and so you could understand how al-Qaeda or some terrorist group related to al-Qaeda might think it could affect the outcome. It opens the possibility of some terrorist group related to al-Qaeda wanting to do something which otherwise wouldn't be the case in the Australian election. So oddly enough, I'm saying I don't think al-Qaeda will try to affect the US election, but because the Australian election is so similar to what happened in Spain, I would think the possibility does exist there." Treasurer Peter Costello has warned that Australians could be at an increased risk of terrorism during the election campaign. "The only thing you can say is this, in Spain during an election there was a terrorist incident, so we have to be careful in Australia," Mr Costello said. Mr Clarke said he took seriously an internet threat earlier this year by Islamic extremists to launch a series of car bomb attacks in Australia unless it pulled out of Iraq. "Australian forces in law enforcement and intelligence are probably the greatest threat to the Jihadist network in this part of the world," he said. "So I would expect the Jihadist network to try to do something against Australia in some way." Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-08-30 |
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