Karzai and US General Stanley McChrystal will hold talks with about 50 key tribal, religious and provincial leaders in the southern province of Kandahar about their efforts to bring stability to the militant heartland.

"This is Karzai's only second visit to Kandahar in the last couple of years. This process of reaching out to Kandahar can only be led by the president," said Tony White, spokesman for NATO's civilian representative in Afghanistan.

"It's important for him to address the senior leadership -- tribal and religious -- and show his support for the effort," he said. "We anticipate that he will reassure them that there's no military offensive planned."

Karzai and McChrystal were also due to meet about 500 residents, and Karzai spokesman Waheed Omar said the president would stress to wary locals the campaign was a "process of stabilisation" rather than a major offensive.

Omar added the president would recount results of this month's "peace jirga", or conference, and reiterate calls for militants to renounce violence, accept the Afghan constitution and sever ties with terrorist networks.

Many of the 30,000 troops US President Barack Obama ordered to Afghanistan late last year are heading to Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement and a hotbed of bombings, assassinations and lawlessness.

But last week saw a surge in Taliban attacks as 30 NATO soldiers were killed and the alliance announced a two- to three-month delay in the peak of the most ambitious counter-insurgency operation in the nine-year Afghan war.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates urged patience with the war as NATO's International Security Assistance Force estimated the 142,000 foreign soldiers in Afghanistan are set to increase to 150,000 by August as part of a troop surge.

earlier related report
NATO cites Afghan 'progress', US pleads for patience
Brussels (AFP) June 11, 2010 - NATO touted "measured progress" in Afghanistan as US Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Friday pleaded for patience with the war effort, saying a new strategy needed time to take root.

"Operations across Afghanistan are making measured progress in extending the reach of the Afghan goverment, changing the political conditions, and marginalising the insurgency," NATO defence ministers said in a statement at a two-day meeting in Brussels.

"Significant challenges remain, and success is not yet assured," the statement said, "but we are encouraged by recent results."

The ministers cited "particular efforts in central Helmand and Kandahar", where NATO-led forces have taken on Taliban strongholds.

After nearly nine years of war and declining public support, military commanders are under mounting political pressure to show signs of success in Afghanistan.

But the US defence chief said a promising new approach -- backed up with reinforcements -- had only been adopted months earlier under General Stanley McChrystal, who took command a year ago.

"As far as I'm concerned this endeavour began in full, and reasonably resourced only a few months ago. A counter-insurgency takes a good bit of time," Gates told a news conference after the meeting.

He said Afghanistan had been neglected by Washington after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, with too few troops deployed, and that the Taliban had the initiative up until last year.

NATO ministers believed the war effort was headed in the right direction but Gates said there would be a "long and difficult" fight ahead, with proof of progress still "tentative".

"No one would deny that the signs of progress are tentative at this point, that they are almost anecdotal," he said.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said coalition operations underway aimed at "the heart of Taliban territory".

The Taliban are aware that if they lose the suppport of the population in the south, it would represent "a serious faliure" and were therefore putting up "dogged resistance", he said in a statement to the ministers.

"But we can already see the results, and we will stay the course."

He spoke a day after the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, McChrystal, said a pivotal operation in the Taliban's birthplace -- Kandahar -- will move at a slower pace than initially planned.

The delay was due to a shortage of Afghan security forces, officers said, as well as the need to reassure local leaders and win the trust of a wary population, which -- like the Taliban leadership -- is mainly Pashtun.

Gates said the operation in Kandahar, like the broader war effort, would take months of persistent work.

"What my expectation and what my hope is by the end of the year, we will be able to demonstrate that we have the right strategy, and that we are making progress throughout the country," he said.

US President Barack Obama has ordered 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, with allies sending 10,000 reinforcements, while promising the start of a withdrawal of American forces in July 2011.

Rasmussen said a gradual handover to Afghan forces was crucial and it was possible the "transition" could begin by the end of the year.

But he said that "transition does not mean withdrawal," with a continuing role for foreign troops as Afghan forces improve.

The NATO chief said allies had yet to meet a shortfall of 450 military trainers, needed to assist Afghan security forces. But he said the gap was not because allies were unwilling to help but because they lacked qualified officers for the job.

The US military has sent in 800 trainers as a temporary move to meet the shortfall, and Gates said the Pentagon expected European instructors to arrive by the autumn to take over.

NATO, anxious to ease the pressure on supply routes through volatile parts of Pakistan, also announced a new supply line for non-lethal cargo for the mission in Afghanistan, via Russsia and Central Asia.

The first trainload of supplies arrived on June 9.

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