john howard

Prime Minister John Howard has been accused of turning his back on Asia, kowtowing to America and being Australia's most boring leader.

On Saturday, he assured himself a place in the country's history with a fourth consecutive election victory that will make him Australia's second-longest serving prime minister in December.

Although he once held a beer-drinking record at Oxford University, Howard has made blandness and conservatism his main selling points.

In his last three-year term, Howard sealed a free-trade deal with the United States and a multibillion-dollar natural gas contract with China, and he bolstered counterterrorism cooperation with Indonesia after a terror attack on Bali killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.

But Howard's approach to fighting international terrorism also has angered some of Australia's neighbors.

In 2002 he sparked a diplomatic spat with some Asian leaders by saying he was prepared to launch pre-emptive strikes in their countries to fight any terrorists plotting to attack Australia.

Then-Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who long viewed Australia as an agent of the West, said Howard was behaving "as if these are the good old days when people can shoot Aborigines without caring for human rights."

At home, Howard angered many Australians by signing on to the war in Iraq. President Bush last year called Howard a "man of steel" for defying widespread public protests and proceeding with the deployment of 2,000 soldiers for the invasion. That number has dwindled to 900.

Analysts say Howard's strength is his gritty tenacity.

He lost his first bid for the nation's top job to Labor Party Prime Minister Bob Hawke in 1987 and the following year was written off by the conservative journal Quadrant.

"John Howard appears to be a leader without any kind of voter mandate," the journal said. "He is neither liked nor respected. Reflections on Howard are almost entirely negative."

It added, "We can only question the potential inherent in a leader whose strongest perception is that he's boring."

A year later, the party dumped Howard as leader. But the owlish son of a gas station owner who grew up in suburban Sydney regained the party leadership in 1995 after bitter internal party squabbling. The next year, he led the conservative coalition to trounce the Labor party.

A wily political operator, Howard was re-elected in 1998 and 2001 after campaigns that capitalized on disunity within Labor and tapped deep fears in Australian society about an influx of illegal immigrants, many from Asia.

If he remains in power until December, the 65-year-old Howard will overtake the charismatic Hawke's record as second-longest serving prime minister at more than 8½ years.

After reaching that milestone, Howard is widely expected to retire before the next election, due in 2007.

The longest-serving national leader was Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies, who lasted more than 18 years.