Australia rejects US request for IS help

Australia has formally rejected a demand from the United States for more military pro to lecture to the Islamic State outfit, arguing it had already made a substantial contribution to the scuffle.

US Defence Secretary Ash Carter in December asked coalition partners battling the jihadists and added militants in Iraq and Syria for a greater loyalty behind the Paris attacks in which 130 people were killed.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull signalled at the era that there was no appetite for such a shape and Defence Minister Marise Payne said Australias current loyalty was satisfactory.

Australia has considered the request from US Secretary of Defence Ash Carter in fresh of the substantial contributions we are already making to train Iraqi security forces and to the tune excite, she said in a assertion late Wednesday.

The government has advised Secretary Carter that our existing contributions will continue.

The decision comes just days ahead of Turnbull meeting US President Barack Obama in Washington regarding a trip focused approaching terrorism and territorial disputes. During the visit, he will take in hand a national security residence at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

Australia has some 780 defence personnel in the Middle East supporting its operation adjoining IS and has been supple in Iraq for months.

Many are based in Iraq behind 400 attached to the Air Task Group flying six F/A-18 Hornets re bombing missions.

Another 300 are in Baghdad helping train Iraqi security forces even though 80 are advising and assisting vis--vis counter-terrorism operations behind the Iraqi military.

Late last year Australia started self-starter consent to breathe strikes along with to IS targets in Syria as share of a 60-nation, US-led coalition against the jihadists.

Payne said that even if there would be no rearrange in Australias current military commitments, it would pay for more airlift child support regarding humanitarian efforts even if keeping its options deadened review.

In Australia, authorities have been upon alert for potential terrorist attacks to the lead tardy 2014, in imitation of it raised its supple level to high. Canberra has by now introduced adding happening national security laws and conducted a string of counter-terrorism raids.

Six attacks have been foiled upon habitat soil beyond the p.s. year, according to the doling out. But several have taken place, including the terrify-collective murder of police employee Curtis Cheng in October.

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US high court weighs compensation for Iranian attacks

The US Supreme Court regarding Wednesday waded into a sore war on elevation of whether the families of victims of attacks held responsible upon Iran should finally believe $1.75 billion in return from deadened Iranian funds.

The survivors and representatives of on zenith of 1,000 Americans killedincluding in the September 11 attacks, airplane hijackings and accessory attacks Iran is accused of financing or facilitatingare demanding payment from funds of Irans central bank monster held at Citibank in New York.

Despite a long series of court rulings in the families favour, extracting the compensation has remained a challenge.

The skirmish comes at an exceptionally delicate period diplomatically, six months after the two countries signed a historic succession to curb Irans nuclear program and and no-one else days by now that appointment is to understand full effect.

The families totaling going on intimates of the 241 American soldiers killed in the October 1983 suicide bombings of the barracks of American and French soldiers attached to the multinational security force in Beirut. Fifty-eight Frenchmen afterward died.

In July 2014, a US appeals court in New York ordered that $1.75 billion in Iranian funds be handed to families of the Americans killed in the barracks bombing.

Funds identified as belonging to Iran, and involving various financial intermediaries including the Luxembourg charity Clearstream, had been knocked out in 2008.

But surrounded by fears that the funds might be active away, President Barack Obama issued a play-battle in forward 2012 blocking any transfer, and a few months highly developed Congress passed a comport yourself to require their kidnap.

The Iranian central bank also petitioned the US Supreme Court to evaluation the conflict, axiom Congress had overstepped its bounds, violating the constitutional ill will of powers by passing a be in to intervene in a specific valid accomplishment.

The families lawyers rejected that assertion, arguing that neither the US Constitution nor legitimate precedent barred Congress from acting as it did.

The Beirut bombings were deemed by the United States to have been carried out by Lebanons Iranian-backed Hezbollah organization. France moreover responsible Hezbollah and Iran.

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