NATO defence ministers, including Canada's Defence Minister Bill Graham, agreed on a major expansion of the alliance's peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan.

Thursday's meeting was preliminary to a Feb. 22 summit of NATO leaders in Brussels, which Prime Minister Paul Martin and U.S. President George W. Bush will attend.

The western deployment plan to Afghanistan marks a significant step in extending NATO's operation across the country by early 2006.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a news conference that the expansion "underscores NATO's long-term commitment to helping Afghanistan build a stable, prosperous and democratic future.''

In a conference call with reporters, Graham said he "made it clear that (Canada) would be opening a new PRT (Provincial Reconstruction Team) in August of this year. And that we are looking at the possibility next year of furnishing additional troops there."

He added that he discussed with ministers of Britain and the Netherlands the possibility of collaborating with their forces in Afghanistan.

Details of NATO's plan

The alliance currently operates only in the north of Afghanistan and in the capital Kabul, where the force includes several hundred Canadians.

NATO's plan envisages 900 troops deploying to Herat, as well as three other western Afghan cities. It would expand the current peacekeeping mission of 8,400, including 500 new troops and 400 deploying from elsewhere in Afghanistan.

NATO spokesman James Appathurai added NATO ministers agreed the mission eventually should cover the whole country once it integrates a separate, U.S.-led combat force.

The U.S. said it will keep troops in Afghanistan to serve with the NATO mission and to continue hunting Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders.

On training Iraqi troops

Appathurai said several allies also offered to contribute to NATO's training mission in Iraq -- a program with a goal of training 1,000 Iraqi officers a year.

The alliance currently has 110 instructors from 10 countries training Iraqis in Baghdad, and hopes to increase that to 160 in the next few weeks.

Graham said during the conference that the "Prime Minister has made it clear that we will not be providing troops for training within Iraq," but added that Canada could "be looking at the possibility of helping training troops or police and officers in Jordan, or some other country outside Iraq . . . "

Graham added that the alliance is asking NATO countries to help Iraq in other ways, "including financial contributions," and that Canada "will be looking at this request positively."

"The prime minister could announce the amount of that when he is in Brussels," he said.

De Hoop Scheffer said he want before the Brussels summit to be able to announce that all 26 NATO states are participating in the training program in Iraq.

Aside from Canada, diplomats said tentative offers to help either inside or outside Iraq, or with funding, had come from Greece, Norway, Luxembourg, Romania and Bulgaria.

With files from the Associated Press