Melbourne: Australian Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon today criticised the previous coalition government for sending soldiers to Afghanistan without seeing key NATO strategy documents.

Fitzgibbon has returned from NATO talks in Lithuania and is confident a new strategy for defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan will emerge at the next summit in April.

However, he said he is shocked that up until now, Australia has not had access to crucial information on NATO strategy.

"I am frankly very surprised and disappointed that the former government was making decisions to send our men and women to war, and to keep them at war, without having a seat at the decision-making table -- basically doing so on a no-questions-asked basis," he told a local radio channel here.

"A government can't make informed decisions about whether to send our people to war and to lead them in the battlefield if it doesn't have information about the strategy and therefore can t make an assessment about the prospect of success," he said.

He said from now on, Australia would expect to have a say in NATO's decision-making on Afghanistan strategy.

He further said he received a personal assurance from NATO's secretary-general that he would do "all he can to address the situation".

Asked if Australia could realistically expect to have an influence on NATO decision-making he said: "I firmly believe we can".

The NATO-led ISAF force has about 43,000 troops in Afghanistan. Of those about 970 are Australian personnel, including Special Forces and Reconstruction Task Force units.

Source : PTI