NATO's decade-old involvement in Afghanistan was set to dominate a meeting Thursday of the military alliance's defence ministers, amid increased attention on French withdrawal plans and alleged links between Pakistan and the Taliban, DPA reported.
NATO is scheduled to fully hand over security responsibility back to Afghan troops at the end of 2014, leaving behind only small contingents of soldiers to help with training.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently made headlines by announcing that his country's combat troops will leave by the end of 2013 - a decision that followed the killings of four French soldiers by an Afghan soldier during a joint training exercise last month.
French troops offering training and assistance to the Afghans are set to remain until 2014 and beyond, as planned.
Defence Minister Gerard Longuet wants to make clear to his NATO counterparts in Brussels this week that France does not intend to "dissociate itself from the alliance," one diplomat said.
"(NATO is) committed to maintaining the agreement to start transition in 2011, continue it through 2012 and 2013, and end successfully by the end of 2014," a senior alliance official said. "Just as we went into Afghanistan together, we want to wind down our presence in Afghanistan together."
US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday that the United States is hoping for an end to its combat role in Afghanistan by the second half of 2013. Panetta made the comments to reporters while flying to the Brussels meeting.
"Our goal is to complete all of that transition in 2013," the Washington Post quoted him as saying. "Hopefully by mid to the latter part of 2013 we'll be able to make a transition from a combat role."
Leaders at a NATO summit in Chicago in May will "shape the next phase of the transition" and "make clear NATO's commitment to Afghanistan beyond 2014," spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said.
"We are well aware that it's expensive to sustain a force and that the Afghan economy will not in and of itself be sufficient to do that," said the official, who asked not to be named.
Concerns about the aftermath of the NATO pullout nevertheless abound - most notably a return of the Taliban to power.
On Tuesday, the alliance found itself downplaying a leaked report based on interviews with Taliban detainees that accused Pakistan's intelligence agency of helping their insurgency in Afghanistan.
Lungescu declined to comment specifically on the document because it is classified, but described it as "just one source of information among many" and said it contained "nothing new." Ministers were likely to at least touch on the issue, diplomats said.
Other items on the agenda include the strained situation in Kosovo, the "smart defence" concept that NATO is pursuing in the face of budget cuts in its member countries, and the military alliance's plan to set up a European missile defence system.
The latter has put NATO at odds with Russia, which feels threatened by the system.
The missile shield is expected to become partially operational by the May summit, for which NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen had hoped to have an "agreement on a political framework" with Moscow.
But there no longer is "any big hope" of a deal in time for Chicago, one diplomat said, pointing to the return of Russia's former NATO ambassador to Moscow with no rapid replacement planned in the run-up to the country's presidential elections.
"There is no longer any formal discussion with Russia on this," he said. "For the moment, we have no official interlocutor."
The two-day ministers' meeting was set to get underway at 1 pm (1200 GMT) Thursday.