Australia to Send Troops to Afghanistan

Australia is to send 150 troops into Afghanistan to fight the insurgency threatening to derail parliamentary elections due to take place in September, it was announced today.

The deployment - by a nation traditionally wary of open-ended peacekeeping operations - will include members of th Australian SAS.

It may be followed by a further reconstruction force of around 200 troops next year as US-led forces fight an insurgency led by remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaida linked militants.

The Australian prime minister, John Howard, told reporters the move had been prompted by renewed unrest in Afghanistan.

"It's fair to say that the progress that's been made in the establishment of a legitimate government in Afghanistan has come under increasing attack and pressure, from the Taliban in particular and some elements of al-Qaida," Mr Howard told reporters.

"We have received, at a military level, requests from both the United States and others and also the government of Afghanistan, and we have therefore decided ... to dispatch a special forces task group," he added.

The troops would be in place by September and would remain for a year, he said.

Despite being involved in the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, Australia had been cautious about providing peacekeeping forces in either country.

In Afghanistan, 450 troops served in mopping-up operations until December 2002, but no peacekeepers were dispatched to Iraq until this February, when 400 soldiers were sent to protect Japanese engineers in the south of the country.

The defence minister, Robert Hill, said the force would work in the west and the south of the country, where the insurgency is at its highest.

"These tasks will be targeted against terrorist groups and their supporters, and are likely to include combat patrolling of remote regions as well as reconnaissance and surveillance operations," he said.

Australia sent around 1,500 military personnel, including 150 SAS troops, to support the US-led war that ousted the Taliban in late 2001. It currently has only one soldier there, involved in mine clearance.

The country's original deployment to Afghanistan suffered one fatality - the SAS sergeant Andrew Russell, who was killed when his vehicle hit a landmine in February 2002.

Afghanistan has seen a significant upsurge in unrest ahead of the scheduled national assembly elections on September 18.

In recent weeks, US forces have seen four suspected terrorists escape from a prison at the Bagram airbase near Kabul, and there have been serious attacks on Afghan soldiers. A rescue helicopter was also shot down close to the Pakistani border.

More than 700 people have been killed in the recent upsurge in violence, and relations between the US military and the Afghan government have been tested by claims of civilian deaths in US missile strikes.

Earlier this week, the US announced it would be deploying 700 more troops to Afghanistan within the next fortnight to join the 18,000 US-led soldiers, 8,000 Nato-led peacekeeping forces and 26,000-strong Afghan army already in the country.

An analysis of public opinion published by the influential Australian Strategic Policy Institute in early June found 58% of Australians supported deployments, with 20% opposed.

The latest deployment has the support of the main centre-left Labor opposition in Australia, but the minority Green party criticised the decision as being based on the wishes of the US president, George Bush.

"Once again our armed services are essentially at the service of the White House - it's not for Australia, but for Bush," the Green leader, Bob Brown, said.