Melbourne: Warning that things may spiral out of control in Afghanistan, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd today urged its NATO partners to do more to stabilise the insurgency-hit country.

"Unless we stabilise Afghanistan we have got problems beyond those that we experience at the moment," Rudd said today during a break in his first cabinet meeting.

Rudd's comments follow remarks by new Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon yesterday saying the war in Afghanistan would be lost unless NATO and its close allies changed tactics, overhauling military and civil programs designed to bring stability to the country.

"We are there for the long haul. And we made that very plain to our American ally and to our NATO partners," Rudd was quoted saying this by The Australian newspaper.

"The defence minister was also underlining the point, which is necessary to make publicly, and that is to encourage our NATO partners to do more when it comes to Afghanistan," he said.

The defence minister s comments reflect the classified intelligence assessments presented to the former Howard government in recent months, which have painted a bleak picture of the military situation facing NATO and its allies as they battle Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

"This is quite critical, particularly given the further resurgence of the opium crop, the illicit economy, the amount of narco-finance which is rolling out of that part of the world" he added.

"The previous government would have us believe that good progress is being made in Afghanistan. The reality is quite a different one," Fitzgibbon told The Australian last night soon after returning from the meeting in Edinburgh.

Source : PTI