Among top administration officials expected to attend the meeting at 8:00 pm (0100 GMT) were Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

It will be the ninth time Obama has met with his national security team as part of a review of Afghanistan strategy since August. A decision on the deployment of up to 40,000 troops is expected as early as next week.

An administration official said Monday's gathering would "possibly" be the last time Obama will consult his team before making an announcement, though he cautioned "that's not something we can say definitively."

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters there would be no announcement before the weekend, but said Obama could come to a decision on the biggest strategic move of his young administration sooner.

"It may be tonight, it may be over the course of the next several days."

Also due to attend Monday's war meeting via videoconference were two men very much at odds over the decision: General Stanley McChrystal, commander of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan, and Karl Eikenberry, US ambassador in Kabul.

McChrystal has asked for up to 40,000 more US troops, warning of possible defeat if he does not get them within a year to put down an intensifying Taliban insurgency. Currently, there are 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan.

Eikenberry, a retired army general who commanded US forces in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007, warned in classified cables leaked earlier this month against sending more US troops until Afghan President Hamid Karzai gets a grip on the rampant corruption in his administration.

While Karzai has earned the opprobrium of the international community since a fraud-tainted election in August highlighted the massive levels of official corruption in Afghanistan, his inauguration speech Thursday generally won praise.

He pledged to clean up corruption, eradicate drug production and trafficking, work towards ending a Taliban-led insurgency, and see that Afghan security forces can take over from international forces in five years.

Clinton, attending the inauguration, sought to turn the page and hailed the speech as a "new starting point" for the war-torn country.

But some of America's allies in the war, now in its ninth year, are no longer willing to wait for the tide to turn: Canada and the Netherlands have announced plans to pull their troops out in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

Gates in a speech in Canada Friday said US forces could provide a "sustainable" replacement in the south for the departing Dutch and Canadian troops.

But he called on other allies to step forward, saying the Afghan effort will "require more commitment, more sacrifice, and more patience from the community of free nations."

Obama also faces opposition to the dispatch of more troops from members of his own Democratic Party who question the wisdom of deploying additional soldiers.

As polls show the American public is becoming increasingly disillusioned with the war, some fear a deepening military commitment could sidetrack his presidency, as Vietnam did Lyndon Johnson's in the 1960s.

But the military strongly favors a so-called surge, and Obama risks being denounced by Republican critics as weak on national security if he refuses McChrystal's request.

Some 800 US soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan and the number of casualties is rising. October was the deadliest month for US forces there since 2001 and another four US fatalities were reported Monday.

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