Prime Minister John Howard has defended his comments about United States presidential candidate Barack Obama’s proposed policies.

The spat erupted when Democrat Senator Obama said he would like US troops out of Iraq by March 2008.

Mr Howard responded by saying that if he ran Al Qaeda, he would put a circle around March next year and pray for Senator Obama to win.

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But Mr Howard says he will continue to criticise policies that work against Australia’s interests.

“This is a world where people should be able to express their views,” he said.

“I think the Labor Party is wanting to have double standards – it’s OK to attack Bush on Iraq because they don’t agree with him, but it’s not okay for me to attack Senator Obama’s position on one aspect of Iraq, because they hold to that view themselves.”

Czech president Vaclav Klaus has criticized the UN panel on global warming, claiming that it was a political authority without any scientific basis.

In an interview with “Hospodárské noviny”, a Czech economics daily, Klaus answered a few questions:

Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that the global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?•

A: It’s not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it’s a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It’s neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it’s an undignified slapstick that people don’t wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the “but’s” are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses.• This is clearly such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians. If the European Commission is instantly going to buy such a trick, we have another very good reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should be deciding about similar issues.•

Q: How do you explain that there is no other comparably senior statesman in Europe who would advocate this viewpoint? No one else has such strong opinions…•

A: My opinions about this issue simply are strong. Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.