(RTTNews) - NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Tuesday expressed confidence that the alliance-members would soon announce "substantially more forces" for Afghanistan, stressing that the war-torn country remains the alliance's top priority.

"Do not make any mistake, we will stay in Afghanistan as long as it takes to finish our job. But that is of course not forever," he said. "Our mission in Afghanistan ends when the Afghans are capable to secure and run their country themselves."

Rasmussen said that NATO aims to shift from a combat to a support role by the beginning of next year, adding that the alliance expects to settle on a counter-insurgency approach, with substantially more forces on the ground for protecting the civilian Afghan population and developmental activities.

"We will progressively be handing over more and more lead responsibility to the Afghans themselves — this is the key element of our approach that will be clear from the decisions we will be taking in the near future," he said.

Rasmussen said that NATO's plans for Afghanistan were "realistic and achievable," adding that they cannot be achieved without a troop surge. He also warned that if NATO were to quit Afghanistan prematurely, Al-Qaeda would be "back in a flash", setting up a base for global terror attacks and trigerring instability in the whole Central Asian region.
"If we were to walk away, the pressure on nuclear-armed Pakistan would be tremendous. Instability would spread throughout central Asia and it would only be a matter of time until all our nations and all our citizens would feel the consequences," he warned.

Rasmussen made the remarks while addressing the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Tuesday. Representatives of twenty-eight NATO member states are attending the meeting, along with delegates from Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Israel, Australia, Japan and South Korea.

Earlier, General Stanley McChrystal, the top commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, had submitted a report about the situation in Afghanistan with Washington and the NATO. He has also asked for the deployment of 40,000 additional coalition troops to Afghanistan.

U.S. President Barack Obama is currently studying Gen. McChrystal's request for additional troops and is expected to announce his Afghan strategy review soon after his return from Asia next week. Obama has already held several meetings with a 15-member core group, including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his top military commanders, to discuss future strategy on Afghanistan.

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