Georgia’s Interior Ministry said that Russia had built up large forces in Abkhazia and South Ossetia — breakaway regions that have support from Moscow — including 300 artillery pieces in South Ossetia alone. Russian forces, a spokesman said, were also poised just over the border at Larsi, where they could open a third line of attack.

The release of the security data, which covers a period in which five Australian soldiers were killed, coincides with warnings that security will deteriorate as local people lose faith in the Afghan Government that foreign troops are supporting.

The rules of justice on Guantánamo are so stacked against defendants that the only surprise was that Salim Ahmed Hamdan was actually acquitted on the more serious count of conspiring (it was unclear with whom) to kill Americans during the invasion of Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001.

June was the second deadliest month for the military in Afghanistan since the war began, with 23 American deaths from hostilities, compared with 22 in Iraq. July was less deadly, with 20 deaths, compared with six in Iraq.

The objectives of the war in Afghanistan have become increasingly uncertain in a conflict where Taliban leaders say they do not feel the need to control territory, at least for now, or to outfight American and NATO forces to defeat them — only to outlast them in a region that is in any case their home.

The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The Defence Minister’s office has confirmed that Professor Holmes, an academic from the University of Newcastle in Mr Fitzgibbon’s electorate of Hunter, accompanied the minister on his official tours in May this year. Professor Holmes, who specialises in small business economics, has no expertise in either security or defence issues.

Two Australian soldiers have been injured, one seriously, in southern Afghanistan when two pen-flares accidentally discharged during a routine patrol. The mishap occured last Wednesday while Australian troops were on a reconstruction task force patrol in Oruzgan Province.