Iraq says Australia bowed to US to expel envoy

5.00pm

CANBERRA - Iraq has accused Australia of bowing to United States orders in expelling a diplomat suspected of spying, and it has challenged Australia to prove its claim or potentially face the loss of a lucrative wheat market.

Australia, a close US ally, has ordered Helal Ibrahim Aaref, one of five diplomats at the Iraqi embassy in Canberra, to leave the country by Wednesday.

But Iraq's top diplomat in Australia, charge d'affairs Saad Al Samarai, denied that Aaref was a spy and said this was part of a US campaign to get Iraqi diplomats thrown out of countries worldwide.

"This is an American decision and it's shameful," Samarai told Reuters.

"It's a new thing on the international scene when a superpower asks other countries to expel diplomats and they do."

He said this expulsion could again endanger Australia's wheat sales. Iraq threatened last year to halve its purchases because of Canberra's support for the US hard-line against Baghdad.

Iraq is normally Australia's biggest or second-biggest customer for wheat, taking around two million tonnes a year worth around A$800 million ($880 million).

The threat has been dropped and restored several times, but Iraq recently offered to restore its full purchases of Australian wheat after massive anti-war demonstrations across Australia.

Polls show a clear majority of Australians oppose a war without UN backing but the conservative government is a staunch supporter of the US stance and has already sent troops, planes and ships to the Gulf to join US and British forces.

"I have made a big effort to ease the situation but now I'm not sure this (trade threat) will not arise again," Samarai said.

Australia admitted on Monday that its decision to expel Aaref was made in liaison with Washington but would neither confirm nor deny that it had received a US request to kick him out.

"We certainly conferred with the Americans on this and they have asked us to look into the activities of Iraqi diplomats," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told Australian television.

Downer declined to comment on reports that Aaref had been spying on Iraqis in Australia, hiding in a car boot to travel the 300km to Sydney despite a general rule banning Iraqi diplomats from going more than 50km from Canberra.

Aaref, 43, who has been in Australia for four months, denied he was a member of the Iraqi intelligence service.

In a short statement issued to Australian media, he said he was working as an official serving the local Iraqi community.

"I came to Australia to build good relationships, not to spy," he said. "I challenge them to provide any evidence."

Baghdad has accused Washington of inventing pretexts to expel its diplomats and convince other nations to do the same as a war to rid Iraq of suspected weapons of mass destruction looms.

Expulsions of Iraqis have picked up in the past month as possible invasion gets closer, with the United States and Britain seeking a UN Security Council resolution giving Iraq until March 17 to come clean on disarmament or face military action.

Last Wednesday the United States expelled two Iraqi diplomats from Iraq's UN mission in New York. Germany said on Friday it had received a US request to expel some named Iraqi diplomats.

- REUTERS