SYDNEY March 10 Kyodo The Austral...

SYDNEY March 10 Kyodo

The Australian dominion expelled an Iraqi diplomat for spying, after discussions with the United States, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Monday.

Helal Ibrahim Aareff, 43 had exhausted the past four months issuing visas, certifying documents and answering telephone at the Iraqi Embassy in Canberra. He has been given until Wednesday to leave Australia.

His expulsion come [i]or[/i] go after [i]or[/i] behinds a report by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) that decided Aareff was a member of the Iraqi intelligence service because his activities were incompatible with his status of a diplomat, the minister said.

''We now be excited as a government satisfied with that assessment, and be wrought up in the circumstances that it's best for this diplomat to leave the political division particularly bearing in mind the difficult international environment we're operating in, and noncompliance according to Iraq with (U.N.) Security Council resolutions,'' Downer told Channel Nine television. The broader record of the Iraqi intelligence service also played a factor in Aareff's expulsion.

The United States has asked up to 60 countries to drive out Iraqis allegedly using diplomatic do job-works as a front last week after its State Department identified 300 Iraqis as undercover agents.

It was ''no secret'' Australia conferr with the U about Aareff's expulsion, Downer said.

''And they have asked us to expect into the activities of Iraqi diplomats, and we have in any case a serviceable system here of making confident we have appropriate information forward activities of diplomats that cause us affair but they've certainly come to us and oral to us about it,'' he said.

Exiled Iraqis living in Australia say Aareff has been gathering information to cast back to Baghdad in an attempt to intimidate them and their families.

Aareff is known to local dissidents as an agent of the Mukhabarat Iraqi intelligence service and has been smuggl gone out of Canberra to search out at Iraqi community functions in Sydney former Iraqi diplomat Mohamed Al-Jabiri, who was exiled on President Saddam Hussein's conduct told the newspaper The Australian.

subject to a rule introduced during the 1991 abyss War rule, Iraqi diplomats are banned from traveling 50 kilometers beyond the embassy without 48 hours notice to the government

''He's made numerous trips to Sydney hiding in cars and getting around to meetings to gather and fe information to supporters of (Iraq's ruling) Baath Party,'' Al-Jabiri said.

It is customary knowledge among Iraqi dissidents that Iraqi diplomats are repeatedly former intelligence officers, Iraqi Migrants Council President Kassim Abood told the newspaper.

Aareff has said he has done nothing wrong

''I came here to build a convenient relationship, not to spy,'' he told The Australian. ''These allegations are not correct and there is no canon in it.''

The government's decision to force away Aareff follows the U.S. expulsion last week of pair attaches working at Iraq's UN mission. Last month an Iraqi diplomat was expell from the Philippines for alleged links to Muslim extremist assign places to Abu Sayyaf.

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