AUSTRALIA and the United States have begun a partnership to share top-secret intelligence from spy satellites as Australia moves to acquire its own satellite to boost surveillance of Asia and the Pacific.

The secret agreement between Washington and Canberra provides for intensified co-operation and intelligence-sharing in the field of GEOINT - geospatial intelligence derived from imagery and other information obtained from surveillance satellites and reconnaissance aircraft.

The agreement, signed by the federal Labor government in February 2008, has been revealed in a secret US embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks and provided exclusively to The Age.

The cable reports that former defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon and US Defence Secretary Robert Gates signed a "statement of principles on geospatial intelligence co-operation" at a "closed session" of the February 2008 Australia-United States Ministerial Meeting (AUSMIN) in Canberra.

The US record of the meeting says the agreement is designed "to take GEOINT co-operation to the same level that signals intelligence has reached between the two countries''.