AUSTRALIA's ambassador to the US and former opposition leader, Kim Beazley, assured American officials that Australia would always side with the US in the event of a war with China, a confidential diplomatic cable reveals.
Mr Beazley's remarks, made in a meeting in 2006 with the then US ambassador, Robert McCallum, just months before Kevin Rudd replaced him as Labor leader, are significant as no Australian federal political leader has ever disclosed what position they believed the nation should take if the US and China came to blows over Taiwan - an event that would present Australia's greatest foreign policy dilemma.