Prime Minister Tony Abbott has admitted the legal agreement needed to deploy Australian special forces in Iraq is taking "a little longer than we would have liked" but insists it will be finished within days.
Speaking in Melbourne, Mr Abbott pointedly said he had indicated some time ago to Iraqi leader Haider al-Abadi that Australian commandos were ready to help the nation's beleaguered military in its fight against the Islamic State, also known as ISIL.
"I made it very clear to Prime Minister Abadi in New York a couple of weeks ago that we were very, very keen to help. I made it crystal clear that our special forces are ready to go and there is an enormous amount of good that they can do inside Iraq," Mr Abbott said.
"But we owe it to our special forces only to deploy them with the right legal protections. With the new government of Iraq still forming, it is taking a little longer than we would have liked to put those legal protections in place but I'm confident that the situation will be resolved in the next few days."
Australian commandos will help Iraq's own elite special forces in what the Australian Defence Force is calling an "advise and assist" role. With air strikes aiming to contain Islamic State forces in towns and cities, it will then be up to Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces to clean out the militants, which is widely expected to be a lengthy and very difficult job.
But Australia needs a legal framework including a "status of forces" agreement with Baghdad to give the commandos legal immunity if, for instance, they are involved in the death of civilians.
Mr Abbott noted that the US already had a legal framework in place. Coming closer than he has in the past to hinting at irritation over the issue, Mr Abbott added: "We think it's only right and proper when we're there to help the people of Iraq, to help the government of Iraq, that we can go in on the same kind of legal basis as the Americans."
Mr Abbott stressed RAAF planes were already doing "very important work" almost daily to "disrupt and degrade the ISIL death cult".
Canberra received paperwork back from Baghdad early last week and was considering it during the week. The Eid Muslim holiday appears to have been a factor in the delay.
Mr Abbott played down reported comments from Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari that Iraq was "absolutely against … the presence of foreign military forces".
Asked about those remarks, Mr Abbott suggested Mr al-Jaafari was referring to combat troops on the ground, whereas Australia was offering only military advisers.
"We're not proposing independent combat operations by Australian and other coalition forces …It's about helping the people of Iraq to reclaim their country," he said.
