Australia Tuesday ordered an internal defence inquiry into thousands of leaked US military documents relating to the Afghan war to see whether they posed a risk to operations. Prime Minister Julia Gillard, whose government has some 1,550 soldiers in the troubled country, said she was concerned about what she called a "national security-style material leak".
"This is an issue which does touch upon this country because clearly matters associated with Australian personnel are touched upon in these documents," she told reporters. Gillard said both the Australian government, which is in caretaker mode ahead of August 21 general elections, and the opposition would be briefed by defence officials on the investigation.
Australia - which first sent soldiers to Afghanistan in 2001 - is mentioned in some of the thousands of documents published on Sunday by the WikiLeaks website. Speaking on Sky News, Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said the military task force would determine whether there was any operational risk as a result of "the unfortunate disclosure".
"We are dealing with somewhere between 90,000 and 100,000 documents and obviously that is going to take some time," Smith said. Seventeen Australian soldiers have died in Afghanistan since former prime minister John Howard joined the US-led coalition fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan following the September 2001 attacks on the United States.