Tony Abbott Refuses To Rule Out Expanding Role In Iraq

                Australia will pursue negotiations with coalition forces in the Middle East about what further support it can lend to destroying the Islamic State terrorist army’s occupation on northern Iraq, Tony Abbott says.

The Prime Minister on Sunday met with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi who urged him to “increase armament and speed up training to end the battle and eliminate” Islamic State, also known as Da’ish.

Mr Abbott, speaking last night in the United Arab Emirates, said: “I certainly don’t rule out doing what we reasonably can to make the world a safer place, because our military forces here in the Middle East are protecting our interests at home as much as they’re protecting our interests and our values abroad.

“So, I look forward to continuing to talk to the Iraqis, to the Americans, to our partners here in the Gulf about what we can usefully do as a nation and as a coalition partner to make the world a safer place and to make Australia a safer country.”

Australia’s military commitment to Iraq has escalated since August, when the government began delivering food to refugees on Mount Sinjar. In September, Australia began delivering weapons to Kurdish fighters opposing Islamic State and, in October, started bombing raids. Australian troops are training and advising Iraqi counterterrorism personnel.

Coalition war planes have conducted more than 1600 strikes on militant targets since August, including 462 last month alone.

Mr Abbott blamed security concerns for the decision to leave an Australian pool television crew and photographer in Dubai while he flew on to Baghdad without telling them.

That decision has triggered frustrations with the media after the Nine Network, the ABC and others shared the cost of the television crew that only learned of his visit to the Iraqi capital when wire services reported the visit on Sunday.

“It’s profoundly implausible that any Australian prime minister would want to have a secret visit to Australian troops and, plainly, there was footage released of everything that I did yesterday, but for understandable security reasons it is difficult to get people into Iraq at the moment and it was for security reasons that I was unable to take local media in,” Mr Abbott said.

In a break with tradition, the Prime Minister’s office supplied video footage of the visit taken by its own cameraman and distributed by press secretaries after Mr Abbott spoke to Australian troops and met Dr Abadi.

Acting Opposition Leader Tony Burke accused the government of adopting “a culture of secrecy (that) is not in the national interest”.

“I don’t think it’s helpful, I don’t think it’s smart and I don’t think it’s fair to the Australian people,” Mr Burke said.