by Paul Ames

    BRATISLAVA, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- NATO defense ministers are to gather here Thursday to discuss the bloc's operation in volatile Afghanistan to block the situation there from further deteriorating.

    However, the prolonged White House deliberations over how to revamp its Afghan military strategy means the NATO ministers are unlikely to reach substantial conclusions on proposals to pour thousands of more troops into the Central Asian country.

    Instead, the United States, Britain and other nations most heavily engaged in the fight against the Taliban are hoping for a commitment from their NATO allies on greater flexibility and burden sharing - giving commanders on the ground more leeway to deploy troops to the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan.

    The NATO ministers will also discuss enhancing cooperation between the 67,700 NATO troops in the country and some 94,000 Afghan security forces.

    The idea is to move from training and mentoring provided by NATO officers to a closer partnership where the NATO units are paired with Afghan counterparts.

    Such a move is seen as a key step toward the transfer of the leading responsibility for security in the country to the Afghan army and police, creating an eventual way out for international combat troops.

    "We need to invest more, much more, in transition to Afghan lead," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said earlier this week. "If we want to be able to do less later, we have to invest more now."

    The ministers will also have to consider an appeal from Pakistani commanders for a greater effort from NATO troops to prevent Taliban fighters from crossing the Afghan border as Pakistani troops pursue their offensive against the Islamist militants in the lawless South Waziristan region.

    The Pakistanis have complained that U.S. and NATO troops have recently abandoned some border posts, allowing the Taliban to move weapons and fighters across the frontier.

    A NATO exit strategy seems remote at the moment after months of grim headlines telling of rising allied casualties, widespread insurgent activity and the botched Afghan elections, which have added to the uncertainty and insecurity in the country, some observers noted.

    The NATO ministers are expected to commit to maintaining troop levels to provide security in Afghanistan through the second round of voting which was announced Tuesday by President Hamid Karzai.

    A long awaited UN report released this week revealed that almost a third of votes cast for the incumbent president in the Aug. 20 presidential elections should be discounted due to fraud allegations, forcing Karzai into a run-off against his close rival, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah on Nov. 7.

    The timing presents an additional challenge for NATO and Afghan troops tasked with providing security for the elections, because the harsh highland winter will make movement in the mountain areas difficult.

    The NATO ministers will be waiting to hear from U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates the latest thinking in Washington on proposals from the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

    He wants to boost troop levels by at least 40,000 as well as switching tactics to win over the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.

    Fogh Rasmussen this week backed McChrystal's approach.

    "We need a general agreement on the approach we need to take in Afghanistan, and that should mean an endorsement of the approach set out by Gen. McChrystal," the secretary general told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

    Fogh Rasmussen said NATO needed to decide quickly, because "time is not on our side."

    McChrystal presented his report in August and critics are beginning to ask how much longer the Obama administration will take to reach a decision.

    However, there are other views in Washington, notably Vice President Joe Biden who favors keeping troop levels at roughly the same level while focusing their efforts on pursuing al-Qaida targets in the Afghan-Pakistani border regions.

    U.S. officials have indicated a decision on the strategy and troop levels is unlikely after the Nov. 7 elections, although Gates says Washington will not "sit on its hands" waiting for the election results.

    If Washington does decide to increase the size of NATO forces, it will have to put up most of the troops itself.

    Although Britain recently announced it would add 500 to its 9,000 troops in Afghanistan, other allied nations have shown little enthusiasm for sending more troops to a war which is increasingly unpopular among the European public.

    The United States currently provides almost half the troops in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, with 32,000 soldiers.

    In addition, about 36,000 U.S. troops there are serving outside the NATO command.

    In Bratislava, Gates is also expected to update allies on the latest U.S. thinking on ballistic missile defense following President Barrack Obama's decision last month to scrap plans to site interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic.

    The Bush administration had said the bases were necessary as part of a missile shield against the threat of Iran, which was believed developing long range missile capability.

    However, the plan had infuriated Russia which saw it as a threat to its nuclear deterrent. Obama said the missile defense plan will be recalibrated to focus on the risk of short- and medium-range missiles, because Iran does not yet pose a long-range threat.

    Gates is also expected to discuss how the revised U.S. plans can fit into ongoing NATO studies on short-range missile defenses. NATO is currently working with Russia on the studies.

    The NATO ministers will also look at shortfalls in the NATO budget, which is strained by the Afghan operation. All but a small fraction of the costs of the military operation are paid by the national defense spending of the individual allies.

    However, there are some shared costs such as the running of the NATO headquarters in Kabul and communications networks coming from NATO's 2-billion-euro (2.98-billion-U.S.-dollar) common budget.

    Sources at the alliance headquarters say the military and infrastructure budgets are now facing a shortfall of around 600 million euros (894 million dollars).

    Although allied military officials say the budget gap will not affect military operations in Afghanistan, they say there is an urgent need to cut waste elsewhere to narrow the deficit.

    That could include eliminating some NATO headquarters in Europe or scrapping a Cold War-era military pipeline network.