British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said that Britain is trying to persuade its military allies fighting Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan to send another 5,000 troops.
He said he had begun a diplomatic effort to encourage members of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition to share the burden of the combat and help train Afghan soldiers.
Britain wants to gradually hand over control of areas of the country to Afghan forces to pave the way for an eventual withdrawal of western forces.
'I have taken the responsibility of asking others in Europe and outside Europe if they will back this strategy of partnering the Afghan forces, mentoring the Afghan forces,' Mr Brown told BBC radio.
'I am asking them to help, I think we could probably get another 5,000 forces into Afghanistan from ... NATO and outside NATO ... and Britain will be part of that.'
The diplomatic push comes as NATO officials meet in Edinburgh and US President Barack Obama continues to weigh options for boosting US force levels in Afghanistan, ranging from sending between 10,000 and 40,000 extra troops.
Britain has already said it is prepared to send another 500 troops on top of the 9,000 it already has stationed in Afghanistan, but only as part of a wider increase in forces.
More than 100,000 Western troops are serving in Afghanistan, with around 67,000 from the US.
Explosion in Kabul
Meanwhile, a car bomb exploded near a NATO convoy just outside a US military base in Kabul early this morning.
The blast wounded civilian contractors, foreign soldiers and Afghan bystanders, the NATO-led force and local police said.
The head of criminal investigations for Kabul police, Abdul Ghafar Sayedzada, said a suicide bomber drove his car into a convoy of civilian vehicles just outside Camp Phoenix, a large US military base near the Afghan capital's airport.
He said three to four foreign casualties had been taken from the scene by Western troops, but he could give no details of the extent of their injuries.
In a text message to Reuters, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the Islamist militant group was responsible for the attack.
The NATO-led force confirmed the attack in a statement. It said none of its soldiers was killed. It gave no numbers of the wounded casualties and did not identify the nationalities of the foreign troops or contractors.
