US Army Lieutenant General William Caldwell, the man in charge of training Afghan security forces, is heading to Brussels to ask NATO partners to send specialists to Afghanistan for the next phase of his mission.

"No trainers, no transition," Caldwell said, repeating the phrase he said was a favourite of NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen in getting across the message that building Afghanistan's security forces is key to withdrawal.

The United States is bankrolling a massive programme -- 9.2 billion dollars in fiscal 2010 -- to build Afghanistan's army and police so they can take over responsibility for security by 2014, as pledged by President Hamid Karzai.

So far, the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan has trained more than 136,000 Afghan army soldiers and over 119,600 police, it said, aiming for 171,600 soldiers and 134,000 police by November 2011.

Building Afghanistan's security forces is pivotal to US President Barack Obama's plan to start drawing down American troops by July 2011.

The United States and NATO have around 150,000 troops in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban-led insurgency now dragging towards its 10th year.

As Western public opinion turns increasingly against prolonged engagement in Afghanistan, the coalition partners are looking to the Afghan security forces as the ticket home for their troops.

"I'm going to the military committee members of NATO to explain to them what we're doing. I'm going there to educate them about how critical their contributions are and the significant difference it will make," Caldwell said.

"We make up 2.4 percent of every soldier inside of Afghanistan today," he said of the mission's 3,400 military trainers.

"Yet our contribution is so significant. All these fighting formations, they start with us -- we train them, we build them, we organise them, we equip them, and then we send them out there to operate."

Obama said on Friday the United States would stay in Afghanistan until "the job is done".

"The job is to provide Afghans themselves the capacity to secure their own country," he said in an interview with the BBC's Persian service.

"The July 2011 date is a date in which... we will then start gradually reducing the number of US troops and coalition troops that are inside of Afghanistan," he said.

"What will happen is, as we are training up more and more Afghan security forces, they're becoming more effective, we will transition so that they are starting to take over more responsibility for security," he added.

"And slowly, the United States' troop presence, as well as coalition troop presence, will diminish."

Since November 2009 Caldwell has headed the training mission, building a combat-ready Afghan infantry and nurturing a police force that could be trusted by a population that generally sees the police as predatory and corrupt.

Huge literacy programmes have given tens of thousands of young Afghan men basic reading and writing skills in a country where illiteracy is put at 80 percent.

With foundations laid, Caldwell said, it was now time to build leadership and specialist skills and he would be asking NATO to send 684 personnel, starting from December.

"We need institutional trainers. They are not going out to conduct military operations. Their job is to empower the Afghans to be responsible for their lives," he said.

The specialised units would be what "really sets the transition in motion," he said.

"We made a decision two or three years ago that we were going to produce war-fighting formations first, and then all the other things that are essential for an enduring force -- engineering, medical, communications, transportation, maintenance, logistics, intelligence -- that we have not built yet."

The current forces "are very dependent on the coalition forces for all that right now."

Topping his list of 15 immediate priorities was the police force, including paramilitary and border police, followed by air, medical, signals and counter-insurgency capabilities, he said.

"We came up with 684 slots so we can keep the momentum going on the progress we have already achieved this year," he said, adding that 1,500 trainers would be needed over the coming 18 months.

"If we don't get these trainers, no trainers, no transition."

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