"On troop requests, we have been quite successful in the generation of new forces," he told a joint news conference in Madrid with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

But he said "the military authorities have requested a bit more because we need more trainers... It's a core element in our strategy to make sure that the Afghans can take responsibility in a gradual process.

"We will hand over security responsibility to the Afghans. But to that end we must educate Afghan soldiers and Afghan police and we still have some shortfalls in our training mission," the NATO secretary general said.

"I urge all allies and partners to fill the gaps in our training mission... because training is the ticket to transition, and that's the road to a withdrawal of our troops."

The United States and its NATO allies battling the Taliban insurgency view building up the Afghan army and police as crucial to paving the way for an eventual withdrawal of foreign troops.

But the US officer in charge of training the Afghan army and police, Lieutenant General Bill Caldwell, said last month that Afghan forces will not be ready to take over security duties from NATO-led troops for at least another year, three months after the scheduled start of a US withdrawal.

Rasmussen said the coalition is "making progress on the ground" in Afghanistan and "the Taliban is under pressure everywhere."

He hoped that a NATO summit in Lisbon in November would announce "that we are about to start a process of gradual transition of lead responsibility to the Afghans themselves. This is our ultimate goal, to see the Afghans become masters in their own house."

Zapatero expressed Spain's "firm commitment" to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan but said the government had as yet made no decision to increase the number of Civil Guard police serving there.

Spain currently has 1,555 troops serving in ISAF, according to the ISAF website, part of a 141,000-strong force deployed in Afghanistan to battle a Taliban-led insurgency nearing the end of its ninth year.

The Spanish contingent runs a US-led civil-military operation known as a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT).

Last month, two Spanish policemen and an interpreter were killed in a shooting attack during a training session in the northwestern province of Badghis.

earlier related report
Pentagon worries about fallout from Afghan murder case
Washington (AFP) Sept 9, 2010 - The Pentagon on Thursday said it was concerned about the fallout from a grisly murder case involving a dozen US soldiers accused of killing Afghan civilians and conspiring to cover it up.

The allegations against soldiers recently deployed in southern Afghanistan have yet to be proven but are "serious nonetheless," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters.

Five soldiers face murder charges, and seven others are accused of joining in a coverup, including beating a comrade who tried to blow the whistle, according to US Army documents released Wednesday.

The accused served in the 2nd Infantry Division brigade at Forward Operating Base Ramrod, in the Kandahar province, a Taliban bastion.

The case poses a potential nightmare for the US military, which has tried to train its troops to win the trust of Afghans in a troubled counter-insurgency campaign.

Even if the allegations are proved to be untrue, the case "is unhelpful," Morrell said.

"It does not help the perceptions of our forces around the world," he said.

"The people in that area who are impacted by these alleged incidents will think differently of us as a result of that."

He added the allegations represented "an aberration" for a force of nearly 100,000 deployed in Afghanistan.

The charges describe the killing of three Afghans in January, February and May last year, with the soldiers allegedly throwing grenades and shooting at the victims. Five soldiers are accused of a role in one or more of the murders, according to the charging documents.

Prosecutors allege Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs kept finger bones, leg bones and a tooth from Afghan corpses.

Authorities accused another soldier, Specialist Michael Gagnon, of allegedly keeping a skull from a corpse. Several of the troops are charged with taking photos of corpses and one soldier, Specialist Corey Moore, is accused of stabbing a corpse.

Several of the soldiers are charged with assaulting a fellow soldier in a bid to intimidate him and stop him from reporting them for using hashish and other misconduct.

The men face a range of other charges including using hashish, obstructing justice, keeping rocket-propelled grenades and mortar rounds for personal use and failing to account for weapons from Afghan police forces.

US Army officials said preliminary hearings, where evidence is presented to determine whether to go ahead with court-martial proceedings, are expected in coming weeks or sometime in the "fall."

The accused soldiers are stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state.

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