Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers that "without your continued support, we will not be able to show the meaningful progress in Afghanistan that the commander-in-chief has ordered, the American people expect and the Afghan people so desperately need."

He warned that the "Taliban have a growing influence in most of Afghanistan's provinces, and the border area between that country and Pakistan remains the epicenter of global terrorism."

President Barack Obama on Monday asked Congress for 33 billion dollars in supplemental funding this year to pay for a surge of US troops and for 159 billion in the 2011 defense budget to cover the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As part of Obama's surge of 30,000 reinforcements, nearly 4,500 troops have deployed and about 18,000 forces would be in place by "late spring," Mullen told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

He said the remaining troops would arrive "as rapidly as possible over the summer and early fall."

Defense officials said the pace of the surge was on track.

The surge meant that more US troops would be in Afghanistan than Iraq by the middle of this year, said the admiral, who was joined at the hearing by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

"Right now, the Taliban believe they're winning," Mullen said.

But he said that in 18 months, "if we've executed our strategy, we'll know that they won't -- that they can't."

He acknowledged that prevailing would mean "more sacrifice and more bloodshed" but added: "the stakes are too high for failure."

His comments came as the death toll of foreign soldiers fighting in Afghanistan under US and NATO command hit 44 in January -- the highest for that month since the war began more than eight years ago -- compared with 25 in January 2009.

The number of Americans who died last month in the conflict was almost double the number for January last year, at 29 compared with 15, according to the icasualties.org website, which keeps a running tally.

Obama's commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, has portrayed the surge as a way to shift the momentum against the Taliban and prepare the way for a bid by the Kabul government to forge a possible peace deal and "reconciliation."

McChrystal last month said that the US troop buildup had started to turn the tide against the Taliban, who were ousted in a 2001 US-led invasion.

The Pentagon's budget request includes money for more special forces, helicopters, unmanned aircraft and armored vehicles designed to withstand roadside bombs -- the number one killer of US and NATO-led troops in Afghanistan.

The war funds also include 11.6 billion dollars to expand the Afghan security forces from about 195,000 to more than 300,000, a crucial part of Obama's plan to start withdrawing US troops in July 2011

In the 2010 budget, the administration asked for 130 billion dollars to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have already cost one trillion dollars since 2001.

Excluding the cost of the wars, the 2011 defense budget comes to 548.9 billion, a modest increase of about two percent over the previous budget when adjusted for inflation.

The funding for the wars was expected to win approval in Congress. But some Democrats have demanded the Pentagon's weapons budget be included in belt-tightening measures amid concern over the government's mushrooming budget deficit.

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