Diplomatic sources have said the focus of the informal meeting, held around a working lunch, will be to ensure a successful mission in Afghanistan, probably by deploying more troops to regions outside the capital.

"We cannot afford to lose in Afghanistan," NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters Thursday after meeting German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

Iraq's security, and NATO's part in it, will also be broached at the meeting, which comes ahead of a weekend security conference here, as well as the damage caused to transatlantic ties by the US-led war there.

A year after the war began, the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found and inquiries have been launched into intelligence findings in the United States and Britain could foster further conflict.

With the US military badly stretched and elections approaching, the talks may provide Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld with an opportunity to mend fences, as Washington needs help as it prepares to return sovereignty to the Iraqis.

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld expressed hope here Thursday that NATO will assume a larger role in Iraq but said the alliance's priority now should be its expanded peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan.

"I think NATO's... first task is to do well the Afghan task," Rumsfeld told reporters on the flight from Washington. "The next step might be for them to take on a somewhat larger role in Afghanistan."

"With respect to Iraq, they have stepped forward and been working with the Polish and Spanish multinational division, and we would hope they would they would continue to take a still larger role," he said.

Rumsfeld antagonized some western European allies last year by referring to them as "Old Europe" and arguing that NATO's center of gravity was shifting to the new members from former Soviet bloc countries.

"I would say the relationships right now are very normal," he said.

Afghanistan was NATO's first mission outside Europe. It took command last August of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which was set up in December 2001 after the defeat of the hardline Taliban regime.

The Alliance wants to extend ISAF's operations beyond the capital Kabul and press reports suggest it could double the number of troops present and create up to 18 civilian reconstruction teams, up from around 10 currently planned.

"This will be topic number one in Munich... the great majority of discussions will cover Afghanistan," said US ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns.

A 12,000-strong US-led force of mostly American troops, separate from the NATO-led peacekeepers, is hunting remnants of the Taliban and their Al-Qaeda allies in the southern and eastern Afghanistan.

As part of its consolidation, NATO could begin close cooperation with this force, which operates as part of "Enduring Freedom", the US war on terrorism, but the new NATO chief says a merger is unlikely.

"There could be however one military commander with two hats to ensure synergy," de Hoop Scheffer told Thursday's Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

German Defence Minister Peter Struck has also said that the Eurocorps force will be able to take over leadership of ISAF at year's end and that the five nations involved would propose doing so at Munich.

"Should Eurocorps come foward and offer its services, the US would be very pleased about that and support it," said a senior NATO official.

The meeting comes ahead of the 40th annual Munich security conference at the weekend, when some 250 ministers, officials and defence experts will discuss "Transatlantic relations, the future of NATO, and future developments in the Middle East."

All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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