Canberra, Australia ? The United States and Australia are moving to place new joint training centers and missile defense programs on Australian soil, expanding an already close alliance.

Some of Australia’s neighbors worry that such military and intelligence cooperation is turning the nation into a tool of U.S. foreign policy.

With a free trade agreement entering the final phases of negotiations, Australia could become in a year’s time the first country with a mutual defense pact, free trade agreement and almost complete intelligence-sharing with the United States, U.S. officials say.

U.S. and Australian military officials have begun early talks toward opening a joint training center in Australia, the top generals in the two militaries said Friday at a news conference in Canberra.

“That’s very embryonic,” said Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, in Australia to meet with top officials there. “It’s being studied to see if that would be worthwhile, but it would not involve the basing of any U.S. forces on Australia.”

The nature of the training has not been determined, said Gen. Peter Cosgrove, Australia’s military chief.

In addition, Australia and the United States are trying to complete agreements that would allow the Australian Defense Force to employ U.S. ballistic missile defense systems.

The close cooperation has led critics in Australia and abroad, especially key regional powers Malaysia and Indonesia, to charge that Australia is becoming an American satellite, without an independent foreign policy, at the expense of important regional issues.

It’s an assertion that U.S. officials, and the administration of Prime Minister John Howard, deny.

Indonesian officials, in particular, have suggested that by signing on to a missile defense program, Australia could instigate a regional arms race. Indonesia is not known to have ballistic missiles.

During a brief appearance Friday with Myers, Howard defended the missile defense effort.

“It seems to me a fairly commonsense proposition that if Australia could have access to a system that prevented missiles directed to Australia from arriving in Australia, then it’s something we ought to be part of, and I can’t understand why anybody would be against it,” he said.