Australia, another country with troops in Iraq at American behest, is in the process of going through an examination of its role there similar to what took place in Spain and is occurring in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The Australian government commissioned a report to examine its intelligence process in advance of the war, including the question of whether Prime Minister John Howard's government tilted the information available to support a decision on his part to respond to an American request to join the "coalition of the willing." Australia has 900 troops in Iraq.

The report came back that Australian intelligence had been weak and had no independent evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It added, however, that there was no indication in the information examined that Mr. Howard had cooked the intelligence to reach a preordained conclusion.

The Australian public is estimated as a whole to be opposed to the Iraq war and to Australia's involvement in it.

Australia is expected to hold elections sometime in the next two or three months. Mr. Howard's main election opponent, the Labor Party, has pledged to bring the troops home by Christmas if it wins the elections.

To demonstrate to Australian voters the advantages of a close relationship with the United States, in May the two countries signed a bilateral free trade agreement, reducing or removing tariffs on a range of products. Estimates are that trade between the two countries will increase substantially if the accord is approved by the two countries' legislatures. There is opposition to the accord in both.

All in all, it is difficult to say what effect the Australian public's opposition to the Iraq war and Australia's role in it and its relations with the United States in general will have on Mr. Howard and his party's prospects in the elections. The government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of Spain was voted out of office in March on that basis. British Prime Minister Tony Blair's party was battered in two recent parliamentary by-elections and his continued leadership of the Labor Party seems to be in question over the Iraq issue.

Given this background, the outcome of the upcoming Australian elections will be of more than usual interest to Americans.