June 15 (Bloomberg) -- NATO vowed to send more trainers and equipment to build up Afghanistan's army, trying to hand more of the fight against the Taliban to local forces and ease the burden on the U.S. and Britain.

Seven allies including France will send army-training teams, some will increase their own force levels and four will deploy more unmanned aerial drones, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said.

``There were a number of additional commitments made,'' U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters at the close of a two-day meeting of allied defense ministers in Brussels today.

NATO has 36,000 troops in Afghanistan battling the resurgent Taliban, the radical Islamic movement toppled from power by the U.S. in 2001. France, Germany and Italy are facing criticism for keeping their forces out of Taliban strongholds in southern and eastern Afghanistan, leaving the U.S., Britain, Canada and the Netherlands to do the bulk of the fighting.

While ``several'' countries announced the removal of restrictions on the use of their troops in the war zone, Gates said the alliance still hasn't provided 20 helicopters to relieve a U.S. unit in Kandahar.

The U.S. will extend the helicopter deployment for another six months, Gates said, ``but I expected the allies to come up with a solution by that time in terms of helicopters that had the capability to operate in Afghanistan.''

Falling Short

Some 17,000 American troops are part of the NATO mission and another 12,000 are under a separate U.S. counterterrorism command. Britain, which is shifting forces from Iraq to Afghanistan, now has 6,700 under the NATO banner.

NATO has fielded 20 army-training teams in Afghanistan. Today's pledge of seven more leaves the alliance short of a goal of 46. Each team -- an OMLT in military jargon -- consists of 12 to 19 trainers. Afghanistan's army, negligible three years ago, has grown into a 35,000-strong force.

``We don't want to be a burden on the international community -- we would like to stand on our own feet,'' Afghanistan's defense minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, told reporters.

Dozens of Islamist fighters were killed in clashes in separate engagements in southern Afghanistan yesterday, the U.S. military said.

Under public criticism for a spate of civilian casualties, the defense ministers decided that the right procedures are in place to prevent coordination snarls between the NATO force, the separate U.S. command and the Afghan army.

Civilian Deaths

U.S. forces accidentally killed at least seven Afghan police officers in a gunfight in eastern Afghanistan earlier this week, and the U.S. is investigating reports that as many as 40 civilians died in a raid in southern Afghanistan in May.

Classified NATO statistics show a decline in civilian casualties in recent months due to alliance forces, NATO spokesman James Appathurai said. The figures leave out accidental fatalities and ``friendly fire'' incidents attributable to the U.S. command.

The Taliban is trying to lure alliance troops into killing civilians by deliberately using populated areas as cover, NATO officials said. Defense ministers discussed starting a fund to provide relief for victims.

``Taliban and other spoilers are using the most brutal violence to try to overthrow a democratic government, and they are using humans as shields,'' NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said.

Afghanistan is also short of police, with the current 40,000 officers well below a goal of 82,000. The European Union is sending experts to train Afghan police in running command and control systems.

Separately, the defense ministers agreed to dispatch 50 NATO trainers to school paramilitary police in Iraq, Appathurai said.

NATO also agreed to airlift African Union peacekeepers into Somalia, though the date and scope of that mission has yet to be decided.

To contact the reporter on this story: James G. Neuger in Brussels at jneuger@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 15, 2007 07:58 EDT