Australians 'will stay in Saudi'
Australians will continue working in Saudi Arabia despite an Australian engineer being shot dead in an attack probably linked to al-Qaida, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said today.
Anthony Richard Mason, 57, from Western Australia state, was among those killed when four gunmen opened fire at an oil refinery co-owned by Exxon Mobil and the Saudi company SABIC in the northwestern city of Yanbu on Saturday.
Downer said the Australian Embassy in Riyadh and Saudi police reported no Australian other than Mason had been involved in the attack. Some reports indicated that two Australians were killed.
He said many Australians continue to work in Saudi Arabia despite warnings from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to avoid travel to the country after an Australian was killed in a Riyadh bombing last year.
“You know what Australians are like . . . They’re not going to be pushed around by terrorists and told what to do by terrorists,” Downer told Channel Nine television. ”Many of us have that feeling very much in our bones.”
Asked if an al-Qaida-linked group were responsible, Downer replied: “We don’t really know who was responsible. The Saudis are obviously investigating that, but you could safely assume so.”
Senior Labour Party opposition lawmaker Simon Crean said the tragedy reaffirmed Australia’s commitment to defeat terrorism.
“It’s another shocking example of how vulnerable Australians are, particularly when they are working in countries in which the threat is greater,” Crean told Channel Seven television.
Labour argues that Australians are at greater threat from terrorists because the conservative coalition government sent 2,000 troops to back the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last year.
But Senior Minister Peter Costello said Mason’s death demonstrated that Australians were targeted because they were part of a Western democracy rather than because of the government’s foreign policy.
“That just reaffirms to us again that Australians are at risk all around the world, not because of what we’ve done but because of who we are,” Costello told Channel 10 television.
Australia’s continuing involvement in Iraq, with 850 troops currently based in and around the occupied country, is shaping up as a major issue in elections due in the second half of this year.
