By NNN-Bernama
Melbourne : Australia has warned Iraq ‘s government it is not doing enough to achieve reconciliation and patience is wearing thin, says Australia ’s Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.
Downer said Iraq ‘s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki should realise that people in the Australia ’s Opposition Labor Party advocating immediate withdrawal of troops from the strife-torn Gulf country could soon be elected.
He said Prime Minister John Howard’s letter to Maliki conveyed much the same message as he communicated personally during a visit last month.
But, he said, at the end of the day, Australia couldn’t just walk out of Iraq and neither he nor Howard were threatening to withdraw Australian troops.
“… To be absolutely honest, and we know this only too well in Australia , the public’s patience is wearing pretty thin on this issue,” he told the Nine TV Network.
“Not that our governments are committed to just walking away from Iraq but you will get people electing elements that do want just to walk away from Iraq.
“It’s a hard sell to our people when the process of reconciliation isn’t working as fast as it should.”
Downer said the real danger was that the US Congress could refuse to fund further operations in Iraq .
“I don’t think the US Congress is anywhere near that point. But down the track, if the Iraqis themselves aren’t seen to be making enough effort in the area of reconciliation, patience in the US Congress will wear thinner than it already is,” he said.
Downer said both he and Howard made the point to Maliki that the US troop surge was making progress but more needed to be done to achieve national political reconciliation.
“I was urging Prime Minister Maliki to set up some kind of high profile reconciliation conference of the various factional leaders.
“At the end of the day, we obviously still hope that will happen but the process has taken a good deal longer than we had hoped. Our encouragement and that of a number of others should hopefully be a positive contribution.”