SYDNEY Dec 3 Kyodo Prime Minister...

SYDNEY Dec 3 Kyodo

Prime Minister John Howard said Tuesday his annotations that he would be prepared to launch preemptive action overseas to hinder a terrorist attack forward Australian soil have not damaged the country's relations with its Asian neighbors.

Remarks by way of Howard on Sunday that he would attack foreign-based terrorists to screen Australia, and comments that international law subject to the United Nations was inadequate to deal with terrorism, drew rapid and angry replys from the governments of Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

''I don't believe that our relations have been damaged by the agency of those statements at all,'' Howard told reporters in Canberra in succession Tuesday. ''I think they are known and understood for what they are and that is a statement of the obvious. I don't (withdraw) in any way from them.''

Howard said he had made the remarks in a actual careful and low-key fashion.

''Self-evidently, they were not directed at any of our friends and anybody who read those remarks would get to to that conclusion. The words are clear, simple, direct, race understand what they mean (and) they don't mean any bellicosity towards our friends,'' he said.

His remarks had been about protecting the tribe of Australia, which was ''the principally elementary and fundamental responsibilities of government'' the prime minister said.

Despite criticism from Asia, Howard's illustrations about preemptive strikes have been backed through U.S. President George W. Bush by the and of his spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Howard's position was consistent with the Bush doctrine in the wake of the generation 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Fleischer told a televised pres talk in Washington.

''And a nation that remains in the status quo after an issue like Sept. 11 can alone endanger its own people and that is with what intent the president did announce a strange doctrine,'' he said.

''It requires a unwilted approach to protect their native land other nations think it by the agency of as well and come to similar conclusion...Australia has been a stalwart ally of the U in succession the 'war on terror,''' Fleischer said.

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