NATO chief sees no early exit from Afghanistan

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - International forces should not expect to withdraw from Afghanistan in the near future, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Monday, adding that a new U.S. strategy for the country was realistic.

Eight years after the U.S.-led invasion to drive out the former Taliban rulers, the United States, NATO and other allies have failed to quell a growing insurgency in the poor Muslim country.

"In my opinion, it is necessary to stay in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future," de Hoop Scheffer told reporters in Brussels, saying he had so far seen "positive reactions" to a new strategy unveiled by President Barack Obama last week.

Obama set no timetable for his revamped war plan but shifted the focus towards training Afghanistan's own security forces, and said the United States would not "blindly stay the course."

De Hoop Scheffer welcomed the decision to concentrate on defeating al Qaeda militants rather than pursuing the Bush administration's more ambitious aim of building democracy.

"I think the Obama plan is realistic about what can be achieved ... That means we will not be able to change Afghanistan into Switzerland in a few years' time," he said.

De Hoop Scheffer said he would call at a U.N.-backed meeting on Afghanistan in the Netherlands Tuesday for extra funds to train Afghan security forces, which he put at $2 billion (1.4 billion pounds) a year.

"Two billion is a lot of money, but only if you look at it in isolation," he said, quoting a "very informal calculation" that the war was costing NATO and its allies about $42 billion a year.

"And I am not counting the immeasurable loss of the lives of our soldiers," he said, referring to more than 1,100 foreign military deaths in the country since 2001.

NOT OBAMA'S WAR

At a NATO summit on the Franco-German border starting on Friday, Obama will consult allies on a plan to send 4,000 U.S. troops to train Afghan forces on top of a previously announced reinforcement of 17,000 extra U.S. troops for the war effort.

That will bring the total of U.S. forces in Afghanistan to 55,000 compared with 32,000 from remaining NATO members and other countries involved in military operations, leading some analysts to say the alliance could be increasingly sidelined.

De Hoop Scheffer said that must not happen and called on the 26-member military pact to play a full role in the effort.

"This is not President Obama's war in the NATO sense. The allies need to do their part. I would not like to see a mission that is out of balance in this regard," he said.

U.S. officials, including Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, have said they intend to break with the megaphone diplomacy which the Bush administration used to cajole extra troops out of often reluctant allies.

De Hoop Scheffer said European capitals would nonetheless face calls to contribute in other ways, for example on reconstruction or in the civilian training effort.

"NATO allies cannot match the (troop) figures (provided) by the United States. That is not the discussion," he said.

"President Obama has said if you can't provide military, provide on the civilian side."

(Writing by Mark John; editing by Andrew Dobbie)