CANBERRA, Feb. 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Australian Prime Minister John Howard said on Friday that the new 450-strong Australian taskforce could stay in Iraq for more than a year.

    Howard on Tuesday announced that Australia will send 450 more troops to Iraq's southern province of Al Muthanna within the next 10 weeks to protect Japanese engineers and help train Iraqi security forces.

    Asked on Melbourne radio 3AW whether the taskforce could stay longer than a year in the initial plan, Howard said they could.

    "I hope it won't be necessary but they could. I don't want to put it any stronger or weaker than that," he said.

    "We will review the deployment after it has been in place for six months and obviously in another six months after that," he said.

    "Now it could go longer than a year although the initial deployment is for six months," he said.

    Meanwhile, Howard said Australia remained "very concerned about DPRK's nuclear ambitions and capacities." Enditem