"Today ambassadors agreed to give direction to the military to further develop the mission," NATO spokesman James Appathurai told reporters after a meeting of the North Atlantic Council (NAC), the top decision-making body of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

"That guidance includes ... the establishment of an Iraqi center of excellency."

The agreement came following a week of diplomatic scrambling after objections by France to details of the accord held up its adoption.

NATO leaders agreed at a summit in Istanbul in June to launch the training mission, after overcoming reservations from France which opposed NATO "planting its flag" inside Iraq.

"We're very pleased that this step has now been taken," said Appathurai, who emphasized that NATO "assistance is for training, equipment ... not combat."

He said the center could be operational by the end of the year.

The Alliance already has some 40 soldiers in Iraq training army officers in collaboration with the defence ministry in Baghdad. The United States, backed by Britain, has pushed hard for the mission to be enlarged.

But it emerged last Friday that France and Belgium among others were unhappy with details of the expansion plans, notably how the mission would be funded and protected, and the extent of the officer training involved.

Appathurai said "NATO will provide close area protection" for the center.

Earlier Wednesday a NATO official declined to give details of how big the training mission would be, pointing out that military planners will work on the details once NATO ambassadors have given the political green light.

But he said numbers were likely to be in the "low hundreds" in terms of training staff, without taking account of troops needed to protect them.

Iraq has endured as a sore in relations at NATO, which last year plunged into its worst-ever crisis when France and Germany spent weeks leading opposition to alliance help for Turkey in the run-up to the US-led war.

NATO officials insist that the discord over the Iraq training mission, while prolonged, has not been on the same scale as last year's pre-war crisis.

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