WASHINGTON, March 18 (Xinhuanet) -- The Pentagon revealed Friday that it has for the first time invited foreign allies into classified discussions that will shape America's military missions and combat forces for years to come.

    Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, at a news conference releasing the annual National Defense Strategy, confirmed a New York Times report that Britain and other countries have been invited to take part in the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). The military review conducted every four years.

    "Thinking things through strategically with one's allies and partners is a major contribution to encouraging them to work with us and do things that serve our common interest," Feith said.

    "Basically, what the Quadrennial Defense Review does is, it asks what kinds of capabilities does this department have to have in order to fulfill the National Defense Strategy," he said.

    The decisions to include allies in the QDR could more closely bind America and its military allies in peacetime, and allow them to operate more efficiently when conducting disaster relief, peacekeeping, stabilization and full-scale combat operations, senior defense officials said.

    "In the past, the QDR tended to be a Defense Department project,and had been pretty tightly controlled within the Defense Department," Feith said. "We think that given the nature of the national security challenges we face, it will promote what we call interagency jointness and a kind of jointness on an international scale if we bring other agencies of the US government and other countries in to work with us on the kinds of things that we're dealing with in the QDR."

    The QDR, which is now under way and expected to be completed byearly next year, is shaped in this initial phase by guidelines laid out in a secret document, known as Terms of Reference and recently approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

    "Generating coalitions or expanding alliances capable of conducting major military operations will require increased levelsof security cooperation," the Times quoted the classified document."The United States cannot win a conflict against terrorist-extremists unilaterally." Enditem