CANBERRA, Australia - An additional 10,000 troops are required to quell a Taliban and al Qaeda insurgency in southern Afghanistan but European NATO partners appear unwilling to deploy more soldiers, Australia's defense minister said Thursday.
"At least 10,000 (more troops) would give us the critical mass necessary to do what we need to do on the military front," Joel Fitzgibbon told The Associated Press at his office in the Australian capital Canberra.
"Having spoken to a number of European countries over the course of the last four months, I don't see a lot of hope that anyone else is about to put their hand up anytime soon. That's a worry because if they (troops) don't come, progress will continue to be all too slow," he said.
The United States currently contributes 33,000 of the 51,000 troops in the 40-nation International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. Canada currently has about 2,500 troops serving in the country. Fitzgibbon said he expected Washington would send more troops to Afghanistan as it withdrew others from Iraq.
"Because of the strength of the United States' commitment, I think if it (a troop deployment) doesn't come from others ... they (the U.S.) will do more," he said.
He said U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, whom he met at an international security conference in Singapore last weekend, agreed with the need to substantially increase troop numbers in Afghanistan.
"He's certainly given me the impression that the United States remains absolutely committed to the project and he's certainly given me the impression that there's likely to be continuity on that issue across the administration regardless of who wins in November," Fitzgibbon said, referring to upcoming U.S. presidential elections.
Fitzgibbon said Australia was already carrying its fair share of the burden with 1,000 troops in Afghanistan, the 10th-largest national contribution and the largest outside NATO.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Canberra could not comment Thursday. A U.S. Defense Department official in Washington was not immediately available.
The head of Australia's defence force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, told a Senate inquiry Wednesday the military campaign in Afghanistan "will last at least 10 years."
Fitzgibbon said Thursday military operations could take less time with adequate resources, although reconstruction of the country will take longer.
"I still believe ... the military efforts will be something much less than 10 years, but there are no guarantees," he said.
Fitzgibbon said he was disappointed that some European countries would not make a greater military effort in Afghanistan. He declined to name them, however, saying it would be counterproductive.
"It's disappointing from my perspective that the burden-sharing isn't spread more evenly," he said.
Fitzgibbon's centre-left government, which came to power at elections in November last year, fulfilled a campaign pledge this week by beginning to withdraw 550 combat troops from Iraq.
Another 1,000 Australian troops, sailors and air crew will remain in and around Iraq in non-combat roles.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who opposed Australia's commitment of 2,000 troops to support U.S. and British forces in the 2003 Iraq invasion, told Parliament this week the previous government's explanation for going to war was an "abuse of intelligence information."
White House press secretary Dana Perino responded by saying the U.S.-led invasion was based on intelligence that the entire world had.
Fitzgibbon declined to say whether he believed intelligence had been twisted to support the war.
"The White House ... acknowledges that they got it very wrong," Fitzgibbon said. "This debate is only about whether they got it deliberately wrong or accidentally wrong, and I'll leave it for the historians to determine that."
