CNN news 2012-04-20 加文本

cnn news 2012-04-20

AZUZ: More than 130,000 troops from 50 different countries are currently in Afghanistan. But as you just heard Prime Minister Julia Gillard say, most of Australia`s forces could be leaving Afghanistan soon.

AZUZ (voice-over): Right now, there are around 1,500 Australian soldiers in Afghanistan. Gillard`s announcement means they could be leaving a year earlier than she had suggested before. Nick Paton Walsh explains some possible reasons for the shift.

NICK PATON WALSH, cnn CORRESPONDENT: While Australia`s contribution is comparatively small, they were one of the more robust allies throughout America`s presence here, and even when Barack Obama in June 2011 said that he`d be withdrawing his surge of troops, Julia Gillard came out and quite categorically said Australia would be staying until the end of 2014.

So a dramatic reversal in her position over the past nine months, presumably down to electoral mass. We`ve also seen this from the French, where the war is deeply unpopular inside France.

And after French soldiers were killed by Afghan soldiers earlier this year, Sarkozy came out and said that they, too, would be withdrawing by the end of next year, and even the United States has, in fact, indicated that its troops will be in a non-combat role by the middle of next year.

So poor signaling, really, ahead of a vital conference in Chicago, in which NATO members were supposed to get together and reaffirm their commitments of troops cached to the months and years ahead. Australia adding itself to the list of countries who want a quick out than previously imagined.

Now this is all really down to a suggestion from Ms. Gillard that the Afghan security forces are stepping up to the place much quicker. They`re ready to handle security, or you may be hearing in the distance some gunfire. That is just test firing. But they are ready to take over the job of securing the country when NATO leaves.

AZUZ (voice-over): Last week we talked about the Ring of Fire. It`s an area around the Pacific Ocean that`s home to the majority of the world`s earthquakes. Chile on the west coast of South America is located on the Ring of Fire, and that`s where a quake hit late Monday night.

You can see the camera shaking during this news broadcast. What you`re looking at is an aftershock. It hit while the anchor was reporting on the initial quake. That one had a magnitude of 6.7.

The same part of Chile was hit by a much more powerful quake in 2010 that killed hundreds of people. Monday`s tremor wasn`t nearly as destructive, although it did cause some mudslides and minor damage, and knocked out some power and phone lines in the region.