Australia close to deal on US defence training base 11:41, Monday, 7 June 2004
CANBERRA, June 7 (Reuters) - Australia and the United States are moving closer to agreeing on establishing a joint military training base in northern Australia, Defence Minister Robert Hill said on Monday.
Australia's conservative government, which sent troops to U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, agreed in January to look at a proposal from Washington to jointly upgrade an existing training base in Queensland state or the Northern Territory.
Hill said Australian and U.S. defence forces would use the centre for air, sea and land exercises.
"It's to enhance mutual capability, ensure inter-operability and to assist a critically important ally," Hill told Australian radio on Monday after talks with U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Singapore over the weekend.
Hill said an in-principle agreement could be signed at annual ministerial talks in Washington next month.
He stressed that no U.S. forces or U.S. military equipment would be permanently based in Australia but the centre would give the country access to more sophisticated training facilities and help boost its own defence capabilities.
"You don't need the same level of forward deployment that you once needed. The confusion in Australia has been that people have therefore assumed that the Americans would want to be basing forces in Australia," Hill said.
The United States is Australia's major military ally, with its 1951 ANZUS treaty the cornerstone of its defence strategy. The treaty, between Australia, New Zealand and the United States, makes an attack on one nation an attack on the other signatories.
The U.S. military has one significant presence in Australia -- a joint facility at Pine Gap in the heart of the desert outback which serves as an earth station for U.S. military surveillance and communications satellites.
The new joint training base initiative is part of a U.S. plan to reposition its military away from a defensive Cold War stance toward a more agile posture necessary to confront new threats.
Security and military ties between Australia and the United States have tightened since the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities and the Bali nightclub bombings in 2002 that killed 202 people including 88 Australians.
The Australian government, which is likely to face an close-run election within months, is discussing a role in the U.S.'s controversial missile shield system and has joined the U.S.-led joint strike fighter project to build a new combat jet. ($1=A$1.43) ((Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith, editing by Michael Perry;
