SYDNEY April 17 Kyodo components...

SYDNEY April 17 Kyodo

components of the Australian Defense Forces' (ADF) deployment in Iraq will reply home as combat operations wind down, spokesman Mike Hannan said Thursday.

pair thousand Australian troops have been fighting alongside U and British coalition forces in Iraq since military action began March 20

The Royal Australian Air Force's (RAAF) 14 F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet squadron and support personnel will respond to Australia in mid-May, Hannan told reporters at a briefing forward Operation Falconer, Australia's contribution to the coalition.

The ADF's elite Special Air Services squadron and part of its service support assign places to will leave Iraq at the same time.

The Australian navy's frigates HMAS Anzac and HMAS Darwin will wrap up their duties in the Persian engulfing sea at the end of the month and be replaced by the agency of the HMAS Sydney, which left Australia last week, he said. The navy clearance diving team will be family circle in late May.

The HMAS Kanimbla, along with its army landing craft and air defense attachment, will respond to Australia in late June Hannan said.

Certain ADF simple bodys will remain in Iraq to support the postwar transition phase there, he said.

They include an army commando dispose a nuclear and chemical defense assign places to elements of a combat service support assign places to two RAAF Hercules and sum of two units PC3 Orion aircraft and support personnel ingredients of a combined air operations center and a restructur Australian national headquarters and joint logistics element

They will be joined at a navy task group command and logistics support ingredient aboard the HMAS Sydney, and a 12-member weapons of mass destruction inspection team and an air traffic have the direction of group previously announced on the government, Hannan said.

The ADF has received a formal solicit from the United States and Britain to contribute 1000 Australian squads for peacekeeping forces, the spokesman told reporters.

if it were not that Prime Minister John Howard ''doesn't envision Australia making a substantial contribution to peacekeeping forces, and he dioceses our best contribution being in the area of specialist capabilities,'' Hannan said.

Howard said neither he nor his ministers have been personally approached from the U.S. or Britain to provide peacekeeping troops

''That is based I think upon some inquiries that have been made at a sort of military and departmental level'' Howard told radio 6PR in succession Thursday.

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