On the final day of an informal meeting in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, the ministers were set to tackle the thorny issue of the US missile shield with Russian counterpart Anatoly Serdyukov.

They were also to reassess the NATO Response Force (NRF), a contingent of several thousand soldiers able to be rapidly deployed to the world's hot-spots, which is fraying at the edges through lack of troop commitments.

Pressures for the 26 NATO nations to provide forces around the world, in places like Darfur, Chad, Lebanon and Kosovo, have weighed heavily on allied efforts to find troops for volatile southern Afghanistan.

"I wouldn't say I am satisfied but today was considerably more positive than I anticipated," US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said late Wednesday, after leading the charge for more combat troops and equipment.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is trying to help spread the influence of President Hamid Karzai's weak central government across the country and encourage reconstruction.

But it has faced stiff resistance, notably in the south and east, from Taliban-led insurgents, and civilian and military casualties have begun to wear away at public support for the mission.

Officials declined to speak on the record about which countries had made offers as those pledges must be confirmed at a so-called "force generation conference" in Belgium next month.

But an alliance diplomat said that nine nations had come forward, and one senior official said that non-NATO nations Albania, Croatia and Georgia were among them, as well as member country Slovakia.

If confirmed, the official said, it could mean a total of 1,000 more troops.

France said it would for the first time send dozens of military trainers to southern Afghanistan, where heavy fighting has taken place, according to a defence ministry official.

The trainers, expected to total around 50, would be embedded with Afghan soldiers in the southern province of Oruzgan, where some 1,700 Dutch troops are based.

The diplomat said that such trainers -- members of Operational Mentoring and Liaison Teams (OMLTS) -- were the key to NATO handing over security duties to the Afghans and leaving the country sooner.

"Successful training of Afghan forces will be central to any progress," Gates underlined.

Germany has often come under the spotlight for resisting moves, for which it would need parliamentary approval, to redeploy away from the relatively stable north of the country and play a greater combat role.

But German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung insisted that reconstruction work was at least as important as fighting insurgents, and suggested that Berlin's stance is unlikely to change.

"There are 3,200 soldiers in northern Afghanistan and in the south there are 30,000 soldiers. It would be a great error if Germany didn't assume its responsibilities in Afghanistan," he told reporters.

"I don't think these demands for more military engagement are very judicious," he said. "The north must remain our prime focus."

A NATO official said some other nations had offered the same argument.

The talks came on a day when the governor of the troubled Khost province on the border with Pakistan survived a Taliban-style suicide attack, one of more than 120 suicide bombings this year blamed on the fundamentalist militia.

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