NATO meet a test for Afghanistan, says Australia

CANBERRA (Reuters) - The upcoming NATO summit in Romania will be a key test of international will to boost troop commitments and bring peace to Afghanistan, Australian Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon said on Thursday.

Australia has about 1,000 troops in Afghanistan and is the largest contributor outside of the NATO alliance, but Fitzgibbon has expressed frustration at the lack of progress more than six years after the U.S.-led campaign to oust the Taliban regime.

Fitzgibbon and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will attend the NATO summit on Afghanistan in Bucharest in April to push Europe to send more troops and to urge NATO to come up with a better strategy to secure security in Afghanistan.

"It's a watershed meeting. It will determine the strength of will of so many of the participating nations," Fitzgibbon told Reuters in an interview.

His call for more troops in Afghanistan echo those of Britain and the United States, and come as French President Nicolas Sarkozy promised more forces, although he gave no details of the proposal France will take to the NATO summit in Bucharest.

Australia was one of the first countries to commit troops to the U.S.-led military campaign to oust the hardline Islamist Taliban, which harbored leaders of the al Qaeda network blamed for the September 11, 2001 airliner attacks on the United States.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force has about 43,000 troops in Afghanistan, with U.S., British, Canadian and Dutch troops engaged in the bulk of the fighting in the country's south and east.

Australian forces in Afghanistan based in the Uruzgan Province work alongside Dutch troops and include engineers helping to rebuild the country as well as special forces who seek out resurgent Taliban fighters.

Fitzgibbon, who was appointed defense minister after the centre-left Labor Party won power at last November's elections, said Australia has a long-term commitment to Afghanistan, but only if NATO comes up with more forces and a better plan.

"Our commitment is solid. We intend to be there for the long term. But it can't be absolutely unconditional," he said.

He refused to nominate how many more troops should be sent, or name specific countries who should do more, although France and Germany have so far resisted pressure to allow their troops to operate outside the relative safety of Afghanistan's north.

"We need a significantly greater number of people there than we have," Fitzgibbon said. "It's about certain NATO countries lifting the caveats which both restrict where they go, and are a quite restrictive in terms of their rules of engagement."

Fitzgibbon said a new plan for Afghanistan needed to better coordinate the military strategy with civilian efforts to rebuild and secure the country, and should help build Afghanistan's military and police so they could maintain order.