While Iraq is dominating headlines, NATO head Jaap de Hoop Scheffer expressed confidence the Alliance will finally fulfill its pledge to extend the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) outside Kabul.

"Tomorrow's summit will demonstrate that NATO is absorbing its new mission of projecting stability to the full," said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization chief ahead of a two-day summit in Istanbul starting Monday.

"Afghanistan is our number one priority," added a NATO official, adding that the Alliance hopes to open up a group of new units in the north of the country, as well as to begin expansion in western Afghanistan.

In its first ever mission outside Europe, NATO took command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan in August last year, complementing US-led forces there since the 2002 fall of the Taliban.

It currently has 6,500 troops on the ground, but pressure has grown for it to expand operations outside Kabul to other parts of the country where stability remains patchy.

Specifically NATO hopes to announce that it will take command of at least five Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in the north of the country, where it already runs one PRT in the city of Kunduz.

NATO's top military commander, US General James Jones, said during a pre-summit visit to Afghanistan that he was "cautiously optimistic" of securing the necessary resources.

Asked when the expansion could begin, he said: "Probably within 30 days I think we would be moving forces. We'll have to wait and see what the commitments are.

But the dangers in the war-scarred country were underlined Sunday when fresh violence was reported in Afghanistan itself, where officials said that suspected Taliban have killed 16 Afghans carrying voter registration cards.

Two electoral officers were killed on Saturday when a bomb exploded in eastern Afghanistan, while an official in rugged south-central Uruzgan province told AFP 16 people had been shot dead, apparently for carrying voter registration cards, when their vehicle was stopped by militants on Friday.

President Hamid Karzai and others have warned that a spike in violent attacks is expected ahead of the presidential polls, a sentiment also expressed by Jones.

"There are going to be people in Afghanistan that unfortunately are going to want to make a statement before the elections," he said.

Amid the apparent foot-dragging by NATO nations, the transitional government in Afghanistan has stressed the urgent need for more troops ahead of the planned September ballots.

"The time is now to support Afghanistan," said Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah. "Investing in security in Afghanistan is investing in stability in a much wider region and a contribution to global peace."

The NATO military chief, speaking on the plane carrying him to Istanbul, said he hopes for a green light for up to 2,000 extra troops to begin deploying in Afghanistan before September. This would include some 800 men deployed temporarily for 90 days around the elections.

Jones also had a blunt message to NATO countries reluctant to provide the resources needed.

"The alliance must develop a better system for, having identified a political ambition, to also identify political willingness to provide the resources.

"A vision without resources is a hallucination, we've simply got to do better than that," he added.

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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