NATO urged the European Union and United Nations on Monday to do more to rebuild strife-torn Afghanistan, where a Taliban insurgency and waning international support are complicating the alliance's mission.
The appeal, by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, was a new sign of the increasingly public tensions between the transatlantic alliance and international organisations three weeks ahead of its summit in Riga, Latvia.
"NATO is doing a lot but we are neither a relief organisation nor a reconstruction agency," he told a conference in Brussels. "Now is the time for the international community to step in and help push Afghanistan further in the right direction."
NATO agreed in late September to expand the military operations of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) it is leading in Afghanistan into the east of the troubled country, giving it a toe-hold there at all points of the compass.
But a dogged Taliban-led insurgency, particularly in the volatile south, has frustrated the alliance in its most ambitious operation ever, as it tries to establish secure conditions for rebuilding to go ahead.
NATO officials fear that if reconstruction is too slow, ordinary Afghans could turn back to the radical Islamic Taliban movement, which was forced from power by a US-led invasion in late 2001 for harbouring Osama bin Laden.
In an interview with Tuesday's edition of French newspaper Le Monde, de Hoop Scheffer took particular aim at the 25-nation EU.
"NATO's mission is not to 'resolve' the problems of Afghanistan because there are no military solutions. The real problem is that Afghanistan is not sufficiently on the EU's radar screen," he said.
"There must be concerted planning between NATO and the European Union," he warned. He added that he would "insist on this question at the summit in Riga", on November 28-29, given that 19 of NATO's 26 states are also EU members.
In an article in Monday's International Herald Tribune, de Hoop Scheffer said the participants of an informal meeting between NATO and international organisations on October 2 had agreed that the EU needed to do more.
But a NATO diplomat told AFP: "The main thing to come out of the meeting was that the United Nations must play the central role."
Across the Atlantic, the United Nations -- through its representative in Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs -- has warned NATO to step up its efforts to keep the Central Asian country from sinking further into chaos.
"The conflict cannot be won by military means alone but NATO must not lose it," Koenigs said in Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, calling for an "enormous military effort" against the insurgents.
He said that while diplomatic and humanitarian aid was essential, attacks mounted by the Taliban, and backed by drug runners and war lords, had to be stopped.
"Otherwise the entire NATO alliance is absurd and not usable for peacekeeping in the Third World," Koenigs said.
Amid what appears to be buck passing, the NATO diplomat noted: "It is likely, ahead of Riga, that a few cracks appear. But it is important not to blame each other for the difficulties in Afghanistan."
One particular shortfall is Afghanistan's police force.
The main task for reconstituting the force falls to Germany. But with little real progress made so far, de Hoop Scheffer said the EU should be "taking over the training and equipping of the Afghan police".
Asked about its role, the spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the bloc was analysing a report compiled by an assessment team sent to Afghanistan around six weeks ago.
"No immediate decision is expected," she said.