Australia receives Malaysian leader
The Associated Press
April 7, 2005

Malaysia's prime minister traveled to Australia on Wednesday for a landmark visit that reflected recent improvements in the countries' long-strained ties.
 
The visit by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the first by a Malaysian leader in 21 years, was expected to focus on Australia's future trade links with Asia.
 
Abdullah and Australia's prime minister, John Howard, were expected to use the visit to start formal negotiations on a free trade agreement between the two countries.
 
Australia and Malaysia began a joint study to evaluate the potential of such a pact last July.
 
The visit is widely regarded as a sign of improving relations since Abdullah's combative predecessor, Mahathir bin Mohamad, retired in 2003 after 22 years as prime minister.
 
Australian media interest has focused on whether Australia will be invited to an inaugural East Asian summit meeting in Kuala Lumpur in December, when the region's leaders will discuss creation of a giant Asian trade bloc.
 
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia, who left Australia on Wednesday after a three-day visit, pledged his nation's support for Australia's inclusion in the meeting.
 
But Abdullah's deputy, Najib Razak, said last month that the first meeting should be limited to the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus China, Japan and South Korea.
 
The summit meeting was organized during an Asean meeting last November that included Australia and New Zealand.
 
The possibility of including those two countries in a free trade zone was discussed then.
 
Howard angered some regional neighbors, including Malaysia, at that meeting when he refused to sign a nonaggression treaty with the Asean governments, dismissing the pact as a relic of the cold war.
 
Abdullah reminded Howard of those tensions in a television interview last week in which he said Australia was more concerned about its relationship with the United States than with its Asian neighbors.
 
In an interview with Malaysia's New Straits Times newspaper, published Wednesday, Howard replied that being allied to the United States did not prevent Australia from working in partnership with its many Asian neighbor countries.
 
He noted that Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore and the Philippines also shared very close ties with the United States.
 
The newspaper quoted Howard as saying that Malaysia and Australia have no fundamental differences in the war against terror.
 
Abdullah has described Howard's two-year-old policy of pre-emption - which states that Australia has a right to strike across national borders to remove terrorist threats - as "unsettling."
 
Howard did not touch on the policy but said his government's first priority was bringing those guilty of terrorist acts to justice and deterring new attacks.
 
Asean's members are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

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