In talks with his alliance counterparts in the Netherlands, Gates said he stressed that a proposed reorganisation of the command in Afghanistan would be carried out in full cooperation with NATO members with prominent leadership posts given to non-US officers.

"I can't tell for sure but I think folks were reassured by this and it addressed some of their concerns about so-called Americanization," Gates told reporters on his plane en route to Brussels from Maastricht.

"I had the sense that people were quite comfortable with the answers that I gave," said Gates.

Some European officials had voiced worries that the doubling of the US force to 68,000 troops by the end of the year and a restructuring of the military command in Afghanistan could lead to US dominance and marginalise the role of other members of the NATO-led coalition.

Gates met ministers from eight countries contributing forces to southern Afghanistan on Wednesday and Thursday before visiting Brussels to attend a meeting of all alliance defence ministers.

Gates said other alliance members shared Washington's view that the international coalition needed to demonstrate progress in the war within 12 to 18 months.

The American people and the US Congress would keep supporting the war against Afghan insurgents if they saw some positive trends, he said.

"But if in a year or so, it appears that we are in a stalemate and we're taking even more casualties, that patience would wear thin pretty soon," he said. "And I think there is a sense that that's probably true for everybody (in the alliance)."

Gates said there now appeared to be agreement among the allies that the new top NATO commander in Afghanistan, US Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, should be freed up to focus on overall strategy while a separate "intermediate headquarters" would be set up to oversee daily combat operations.

The new arrangement would mean the Afghan command would remain "very much a NATO operation," he said.

"We want allied commanders in various positions in that headquarters and as many allied staff as we can get to help man it," he said.

The existing command structure was problematic as it placed too many burdens on the top commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), he said.

Under the current arrangement, the top commander "has far too wide an array of responsibilities to be able to guide the tactical battle on a day-to-day basis across the country," he said.

While McChrystal and his British deputy would handle "broader strategy," a separate headquarters under them would "have its own commander who would focus really just on the tactical situation, run the day-to-day battle," Gates said.

The secondary "intermediate headquarters" would be led by another US officer, Lieutenant General David Rodriguez, nominated by President Barack Obama to serve as McChrystal's deputy commander.

The plan was similar to the structure employed in Iraq by US forces, he said.

Gates also reiterated that an influx of US forces would mean more combat with Islamist insurgents and more casualties among coalition troops.

"We've been very upfront about the fact that as we send in more troops, and go into areas that have not had an Afghan government or ISAF presence yet, that there will be more combat and the result of that will be more casualties," he said.

"And we just need to be realistic about that and I think everybody's been quite upfront about it."

Thousands of US military reinforcements are deploying to the volatile south in a bid to stem a growing insurgency led by the Taliban, who were ousted from power in a US-led invasion in 2001.

Apart from US forces, about 33,000 other foreign troops are stationed in Afghanistan.

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