, Australia is close to committing special forces soldiers to Afghanistan to counter an expected Taliban spring offensive, Defence Minister Brendan Nelson said March 25.
Nelson said it was likely that elite Special Air Services troops would be sent to southern Uruzgan province, a former stronghold of the fundamentalist Taliban regime.
“We believe there is a need. We think that the Taliban will be mounting a very strong offensive shortly,” he told Australian television. “We are very close to making a decision about it.”
Canberra, which currently has 400 soldiers in the Central Asian nation, pulled a 200-strong SAS contingent out of Afghanistan in September.
Nelson said he had spoken March 24 to Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, who was in The Hague to discuss troop deployments to Afghanistan with Dutch officials, and the government was close to recommitting SAS troops.
“We believe we have satisfied and settled the command-and-control arrangements that are necessary for us to do the job,” he said. “And if we do re-deploy, and I think it’s likely that we will, it will be a special forces task group.”
Nelson said he would discuss additional deployments with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other defense ministers when they meet in Canada next month.
“We are in Afghanistan because Afghanistan is the crossroads to a modern and a free world,” Nelson said.
Australia first sent troops to Afghanistan in late 2001 following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S.
A 33,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force is deployed in the country to tackle a growing insurgency by supporters of the former Taliban regime and to expand the influence of the weak central government.
