Australia’s opposition Labor Party promised during the weekend to maintain the country’s traditional strong alliance with America if it wins the bitterly fought October 9 election, but the party leader, Mark Latham, is standing by his campaign pledge to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq by Christmas. The prime minister, John Howard, has denounced that position as “cutting and running.”

According to Mr. Howard, a conservative who is seeking to become only the third Australian leader ever to win four consecutive national elections, a premature pullout of Australian troops would be a victory for terrorism.

“It will be a terrible defeat for the West,” he told Britain’s Sky News.

“It would be a huge victory for the terrorists in Iraq, if we were to cut and run, if the Americans were to cut and run, if the British were to cut and run,” Mr. Howard said.

Canberra’s contribution to the American-led coalition in Iraq has increased in importance as an issue in the campaign. Until the bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta on September 9,domestic issues predominated and Mr. Howard, who says he intends to keep 900 military personnel stationed in and around Iraq until they are no longer needed, hoped to surf to an election win on the back of a booming economy. The Jakarta terror attack, however, has complicated the race for the prime minister, who only weeks before the terrorists struck was condemned by a group of 43 former military and diplomatic officials, including a former chief of the country’s military, for involving Australia in Iraq. They argued that Australia is no safer as a result of the ousting of Saddam Hussein – an argument Mr. Latham has also been pressing.

The Australian election is being watched closely in Washington and London. Mr. Howard is the first leader who contributed troops to the initial invasion of Iraq to face an election – Spain was among the countries who sent troops after Mr. Hussein was ousted – and his defeat in the polls would deprive President Bush of a staunch ally. Mr. Howard has been robust on the campaign trail in dismissing Labor accusations that he made a mistake in sending troops.

His decision to join the Iraq invasion triggered massive protests in major cities across Australia last year – the largest such demonstrations since the Vietnam War. An opinion poll found last week that 66 percent of Australians said the threat of world terrorism has been increased by the war in Iraq. But another poll shows the country is narrowly divided on whether it was a mistake for Australia to join America in invading Iraq, with 48% saying it was and 45% backing Australia’s membership in the coalition. At the weekend, thousands of anti-war protesters took to the streets in six Australian cities.

Labor’s Mr. Latham echoes John Kerry on the campaign trail, saying homeland security is more important than waging war in Iraq and questioning whether Iraq was the right target. If Australian forces are to fight terror, they should do so closer to home, he argues.

“I say the real job for Australia is in our region, working with our neighbors and with the United States in our part of the world,” he said.

The race is too close to call, and for much of the campaign Labor and the ruling conservative Liberal-National coalition have been running neck-and-neck. Last week, one opinion poll had Mr. Latham pulling away slightly and opening a 4-percentage-point lead but another published yesterday gave Mr. Howard a lead of 2 percentage points. Mr. Howard’s advisers are nervous of a rerun of this spring’s Spanish elections, in which terrorists altered the dynamic of parliamentary elections by bombing a train in Madrid. That terrorist attack helped Spain’s inexperienced Socialist Party leader, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, secure power when the electorate, shocked by the carnage wrought by the terrorists, embraced his pledge to withdraw more than 1,000 Spanish troops from Iraq if elected. Another bombing of Australian interests overseas, or an attack in Australia itself before voting, could undermine Mr. Howard.

While the Australian military deployment in Iraq is tiny, a withdrawal would add to the impression following the Spanish pullout that Washington is losing allies.

In the run-up to the Australian election the rhetoric has been heated and personal insults have flown. Australian elections traditionally are rough-house affairs, and both Mr. Howard and his feisty Labor opponent are no shrinking violets when it comes to mixing it up. Mr. Latham is famously impetuous and notoriously sharp-mouthed. Nicknamed Biffo, the Labor leader is famed for an early-morning brawl with a Sydney taxi driver, and he has prompted rows in Parliament with his language, once describing his conservative opponents as a “conga line of suck-holes.”

Earlier in the spring, just weeks after securing the party leadership, Mr. Latham offended the American ambassador when he claimed that Mr. Bush’s foreign policy looked like U.S. imperialism, meanwhile dismissing Mr. Howard as a “yes-man to a flaky and dangerous American president.” The American protest at Mr. Latham’s language put some Australian commentators in mind of the testiness between Canberra and Washington in 1972 when the Labor prime minister, Gough Whitlam, upset President Nixon with his outspoken views on the American bombing raids on North Vietnam.

Last month, Diana Kerry, who heads her brother’s campaign effort to win votes from Americans living overseas, irritated the Howard government by saying in an interview with an Australian paper that Mr. Howard’s support for America in Iraq had made Australia a bigger target for terrorists.

Mr. Latham has toned down his anti-Bush remarks in recent days and has sought to convince voters that the traditionally strong ties between Australia and America would remain intact if Labor wins. But Mr. Howard has said a premature pullout of Australian troops would damage those ties.

During the campaign, the 65-year-old Mr. Howard, whose coalition currently controls 83 seats in the 150-member House of Representatives, has taken pains to present himself as a pragmatic steward of a good economy. During rallies he has repeatedly stressed the country’s eight-year economic boom and highlighted Australia’s historically low-levels of unemployment – now at just 5.7%. The conservative leader has questioned also whether his inexperienced 43-year-old rival has the skills to manage the economy well.

Both party leaders have focused much of their campaigning in Queensland, where the election is likely to be decided by the state’s high concentration of swing voters.