THE Minister for Defence, Joel Fitzgibbon, has lashed out at the United Nations for hampering the rebuilding of Afghanistan amid concerns that internal wrangling and bureaucracy are obstructing efforts to help the country.
Mr Fitzgibbon expressed his anger at a meeting of defence ministers from the war's southern command and rallied Australia's coalition partners to individually and jointly protest to the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon.
He was especially angry that an offer by Australia to send a one-star general to help the UN special envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, with the reconstruction effort had fallen on deaf ears.
"[The envoy] is unable to work effectively across the country," Mr Fitzgibbon said.
"We want his office to have a significant presence in Oruzgan [where most of Australia's 1000-plus troops are based], but he can't until he is significantly financed and resourced … There is nothing more symbolic of the problem than the fact we still have a one-star on standby to go."
Mr Fitzgibbon said his colleagues were "astonished by the delays, and the hold-up was a "complete mystery".
"I went there with the particular frustration of the under-resourcing of the UN special envoy. I was very pleased to learn that everyone in the room shared that frustration … If I hadn't raised it it would have been raised anyway … It is a complete mystery to me; it seems like it should be just a simple exercise."
A UN official has admitted that internal wrangling and bureaucratic delays have impeded the ability of the envoy to co-ordinate the international effort to rebuild the country.
"We share that frustration, but the reality is that we have to work within the system," said Aleem Siddique, a spokesman for the UN assistance mission in Afghanistan. "We are only as strong as the weakest will of our member states."
Mr Siddique said the world had set the envoy a "mammoth task", but a request for additional staff and resources was unlikely to be approved before a UN General Assembly meeting next northern spring.
"The UN bureaucracy works to its own time scale," he said. "The resources need to be approved by the general assembly. This is in process."
The defence ministers' meeting in Cornwallis, Canada, was the first since the election of the US president-elect, Barack Obama, who has promised to increase US efforts in Afghanistan.
"There was a sense of hope at the meeting that new administration might have more success in persuading European NATO countries to do more in terms of troop numbers," Mr Fitzgibbon said.
"We were left with the key impression that the surge would be even larger than the one Barack Obama talked about during the campaign, and, second, that the bulk of those troops are likely to go to southern Afghanistan, where they are needed most."
Mr Fitzgibbon held bilateral meetings with the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, and the Dutch, Canadian and British ministers for defence. He said Mr Gates had raised his target for the Afghan Army from 80,000 soldiers, agreed in Bucharest this year, to 134,000.
Asked whether the US would request further Australian troops, he said: "Secretary Gates again expressed gratitude and gave no indication he will be asking us to do more."