After the United States ordered at least 30,000 extra troops to the war stricken country, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was confident that allies would pull their weight in the operation.
“We’re going... to have a number of public announcements to additional troop commitments, additional civilian assistance and development aid as well,” she said heading for the Brussels meeting.
The US-led coalition needed “more combat forces and more trainers, but there’s not as big a distinction between those two,” she added.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband warned that a new impetus was needed in Afghanistan, eight years after the US-led coalition ousted the Taliban.
“We are now at a vital time, and we all know that in the 1990s Afghanistan was the incubator of international terrorism, the incubator of choice for global jihad,” he told reporters.
“It’s very important that we make progress,” he said. “We know that the stakes are very high indeed.”
The international force is seeking new troops to implement a counter-insurgency strategy to combat insurgents who have inflicted increasing casualties over the last year.
US President Barack Obama has called on other countries to come up with 5,000-7,000 troops to go alongside the US troops.
NATO officials said Thursday that more than 20 nations of the 43 in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had signalled that they would up their contribution, and that the 5,000 target would be surpassed.
Italy confirmed Thursday that it was ready to send 1,000 extra soldiers, a figure matched by Georgia, while Poland is likely to send 600. Britain and South Korea have committed 500 each.
A further 1,500 troops — 700 of them British — sent to provide security for the fraud-marred elections in August will also remain in country.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen exhorted the allies and the new Afghan government, the United Nations and the European Union to help win the confidence of the Afghans.
“If this international effort is to succeed, and it will, it must be a true team effort,” he told the ministers at NATO headquarters. “What happens in Afghanistan has a direct effect on our own security.”
However Obama’s decision to begin withdrawing US troops in mid-2011 has raised some concerns, and Clinton said she would try to clear up “misunderstandings”.
“There have been misunderstandings about what that date meant, (...) which I’ll be happy to discuss with any of our partners,” she told reporters.
The transfer of combat missions to Afghan forces in 2011 would be “based on the conditions as we evaluate at that time,” she said.
General Stanley McChrystal, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan and who drew up the strategy, had been pushing for 40,000 troops to boost security.
He told Afghan lawmakers the extra troops would train local forces to help prepare for a transfer of security, while the rest would fan out across the south and east where the Taliban insurgency is strongest.
“I believe by next summer you will see significant improvements in security,” McChrystal said.
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates revealed that Obama had approved the possible deployment of an extra 3,000 troops on top of those already given marching orders. They will join some 70,000 US forces already on the ground.
If the pledges are met, international forces and the Afghan army could total almost 300,000 troops by the middle of next year, around 10 times more than ISAF estimates of the number of Al-Qaeda, Taliban and other militants.
While the plan has been welcomed at NATO, Pakistan — Afghanistan’s neighbour fighting its own battle against Islamist insurgents — has not yet backed it, amid fears that a withdrawal could embolden the Taliban on its own territory.
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