By Rob Taylor CANBERRA, March 24 (Reuters) - Australians overwhelmingly oppose sending extra troops to Afghanistan as the death toll mounts and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd comes under U.S. pressure to reinforce the fight against the Taliban, a poll found on Tuesday. As Rudd prepares to meet President Barack Obama in Washington to discuss progress in Afghanistan, a closely-watched Newspoll in the Australian newspaper showed only 28 percent of voters in favour of reinforcing Canberra's 1,100 troops in the country. The result followed the deaths last week of two Australian soldiers, bringing the toll in Afghanistan to 10. Australia is the largest military contributor outside the NATO alliance. "Those poll numbers are not going to be encouraging for Rudd, but nor are they surprising. Afghanistan has now been going on for a long time and it hasn't got very far," defence analyst Hugh White told Reuters. Australia, a close Washington ally, was an original member of the U.S.-led coalition that arrived in Afghanistan in 2001 to oust the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters. Australia has around 1,100 reconstruction troops and special forces commandos in Oruzgan province, where they are deployed alongside Dutch forces leading the provincial reconstruction team. Rudd's centre-left Labor government has until recently refused to consider sending extra troops as the fight against insurgents stalled, urging larger European nations like Germany to do more instead to combat the Taliban in the country's south. But White, a former senior defence official and analyst from the Lowy Institute for International Policy, said Canberra was now under intense pressure itself from Washington. The United States is boosting its troop numbers by 17,000 and seeking more help from close allies. While Rudd would prefer to send a force of police and aid advisers to help with upcoming Aghan elections in August, White said Australia would likely have to supply at least an extra 500 combat troops to avoid straining military ties with Washington. "Having talked up the importance of everybody else making military contributions, it's going to be very hard for Australia to avoid making extra contributions itself," he said. Speaking in Washington, Rudd said he understood the growing public concerns about Afghanistan. The dwindling support contrasted with two-thirds support for the war after the September 11, 2001, airliner attacks in the United States. "We have to deal with the cause of what brought us to Afghanistan in the first place, and that is ... the hundred or so Australians who've been killed in terrorist attacks around the world," Rudd told reporters. (Editing by Jerry Norton)
A helicopter carries a coffin that contains the remains of Afghanistan's first president, Mohammad Daud Khan, during a ceremony to rebury him, in Kabul March 17, 2009. Daud Khan was shot ...
