Rice and her British counterparts stepped up calls for NATO allies to provide more combat troops, underlining the urgency of the task which is not a peacekeeping mission but a full-blown counter-insurgency battle.

"The alliance is facing a real test here and it is a test of the alliance's strength," Rice told reporters at a joint press conference with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

"But we shouldn't underestimate the transformation that NATO itself has gone through in really learning how to fight this fight," she told reporters.

The talks come the week after Germany rebuffed US calls for more troops in the battle-scarred south, the scene of most of the fighting against the Islamist Taliban militia, in a tiff played out publically.

Commanders in Afghanistan have been calling for around 7,500 extra troops. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) comprises some 42,000 troops from 39 countries.

The United States and Britain are the biggest contributors and the two countries are lobbying hard ahead of NATO defence and foreign ministers' meetings in the next few weeks climaxing in a summit in Bucharest in April.

Rice, who also held talks with Prime Minister Gordon Brown, said the allies were engaged in "a different fight than the one NATO was structured to do", conceding: "It has taken some time".

Brown's office said they had "agreed on the need for greater burden sharing among NATO allies and discussed the ways in which we could build the international coalition's contribution in the run up to the April NATO summit."

Rice said NATO's support for the pro-Western government of President Hamid Karzai also amounted to rebuilding the country and its institutions as well as fighting the drug trade and corruption.

But she appeared to imply NATO countries may not be fully behind the mission in Afghanistan because their people failed to understand the underlying problem.

"Our populations need to understand this is not a peacekeeping mission. This is a counter-insurgency problem and that's different," she said.

Rice also said the United States and NATO were working closely with Pakistan to deny the Taliban and Al-Qaeda the "kind of territorial base they once had" in Afghanistan to launch the September 11, 2001 attacks.

"We're working with Pakistan in what has essentially been an ungoverned area for its entire existence. The Pakistani army has tough work to do there," Rice said, referring to tribal areas along its northern border with Afghanistan.

In Washington US Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted that NATO allies' unwillingness to contribute forces to Afghanistan has put a cloud over the future of the alliance.

"I worry a great deal about the alliance evolving into a two-tiered alliance, in which you have some allies willing to fight and die to protect peoples' security, and others who are not," he said.

"And I think that it puts a cloud over the future of the alliance, if this is to endure and perhaps even get worse," he said.

Protestors staged a demonstration outside Downing Street against the talks with Rice.

"Condoleezza Rice is attempting to shore up the collapsing US-led occupation of Afghanistan and the disaster that is Iraq," said a spokesman for the Stop The War Coalition.

"We are making it clear to Miss Rice that the British people want an end to the 'special relationship' with the US and an end to British participation in Bush's wars. She is not welcome in this country."

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