WASHINGTON — Australia and the United States will launch negotiations next month on a binding deal to govern the stationing of US troops in northern Darwin, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Wednesday.
He was speaking after annual bilateral talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry and their Australian counterparts Defense Minister David Johnson and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.
Plans to post more than 2,500 Marines by 2016-17 to the northern city of Darwin were first unveiled two years ago by US President Barack Obama.
And Hagel said that the initiatives “remain on track.”
“Two companies of Marines have rotated through Darwin,” he told a press conference at the State Department, adding that next year, the force would expand to 1,100 Marines and continue to grow.
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