John Howard's contempt for Labor over Iraq

IN his memoir, John Howard says it was "inconceivable" that Australia would not back the US in Iraq.

IN his memoir, John Howard says it was "inconceivable" that Australia would not back the US in Iraq.

He accuses former Labor leaders Kevin Rudd, Kim Beazley and Simon Crean of hedging their bets on the war.

"I had a contempt for Labor's position," Mr Howard writes in Lazarus Rising.

The former Liberal prime minister charges the Labor Party with lacking conviction, hiding behind the UN and outsourcing its foreign policy to the Russians and French on the Security Council.

Laying this charge, he writes: "The political debate in Australia was not between the Coalition arguing that a military operation was justified against the Labor Party asserting it could never be justified but rather about the precise circumstances in which it would be justified."

He says Mr Crean made it clear Labor would support Australia's involvement if a further Security Council resolution were obtained.

Evidently, Mr Howard writes, it was wrong of him to rely upon the US alliance but "it was in order to allow the caprice of a Security Council vote by the Russians and the French to determine the policy of the Australian Labor Party".

Mr Howard says Labor "tied its future action to the whims of Jacques Chirac and Vladimir Putin". He says that Rudd wrote to him about Iraq in November 2003 "with suggestions for additional Australian involvement". He quotes Mr Beazley as saying he was glad to see Saddam Hussein removed. He says Mr Rudd, as opposition foreign affairs spokesman, insisted before the war that Iraq had a WMD capacity.

Mr Howard also reveals his "astonishing" war-eve New York meeting with Hans Blix, when the UN chief weapons inspector admitted Iraq "would not have moved an inch without the pressure of the Allied military build-up".

In the 711-page Lazarus Rising, serialised today in The Weekend Australian, Mr Howard criticises former Victorian Liberal premier Jeff Kennett for being "unsupportive at critical times" during the 1998 waterfront dispute.

Mr Howard says there was a "total failure" of Victorian authorities to enforce Supreme Court orders. He rang Mr Kennett to seek his help and was dismayed to be let down.

Mr Howard also reveals his clash with South African leader Thabo Mbeki in 2002 over the latter's decision, later reversed, not to attend a meeting in Nigeria to address the Zimbabwe issue.