Australia will not send more troops to Iraq: Prime Minister

Australia will not send more troops to Iraq to help fill the void left by the withdrawal of military personnel by Spain, Honduras and the Dominican Republic, Prime Minister John Howard said on Wednesday.
Australia, a staunch US ally, was an original member of the US-led coalition, but only around 350 of its 2,000 troops are left in Iraq, where spreading violence has threatened to plunge the country into chaos.
Howard has always made it clear to US President George W. Bush that Australia could not send peacekeepers to Iraq because it was committed to peacekeeping in East Timor, Papua New Guinea's Bougainville island and elsewhere in the South Pacific. But the United States wants to fill any void created after Spain, Honduras and the Dominican Republic pulled out their contingents with US forces or troops from other coalition partners.
"We haven't been asked (to send more troops to Iraq) and we're not planning to," Howard told Australian radio.
But he has insisted troops already in Iraq would stay until their job was done and has not set a deadline on when they could withdraw. Opposition Labour leader Mark Latham has vowed to bring them home by Christmas, if he wins this year's election.
Spain's new Socialist government announced this week it would withdraw its 1,400 troops from Iraq and its decision was quickly followed by Honduras, which plans to pull out its 370 troops, and the Dominican Republic, which will return home 300 troops.
Thailand has also signalled that its commitment to Iraq, where an uprising by radical Shia has claimed hundreds of lives during the past month, was waning and would withdraw its 451 troops if they were attacked.
"That's regrettable," Howard said of the troop withdrawals.
"It will encourage the terrorists. It will make it harder for those who are left, but we are not going to cut and run. I don't think the coalition is unravelling."
An ACNielson opinion poll late last month found two-thirds of Australians want the nation's troops to stay in Iraq until their mission is finished.