By Carole Landry

BRUSSELS (AFP) - US Vice President Joe Biden sounds out NATO allies on Tuesday as Washington pieces together a fresh strategy to fight the insurgency in Afghanistan with more international support.

President Barack Obama has ordered 17,000 extra US troops to Afghanistan and a top-to-bottom review of his war policy, shifting the focus from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the fight against Islamic militants.

"This is not just lip service, the idea of consultation, we mean it, and in return we want concrete ideas and concrete assistance," a US official said ahead of the Brussels meetings.

Britain, France and other countries have ruled out sending more troops to Afghanistan but the Europeans, who have shown much enthusiasm for Obama's fresh approach, have kept an open mind about other ways of helping.

European officials have suggested they could take part in police training, civilian reconstruction and offer assistance during elections in Afghanistan set for August.

Germany has offered to send 600 extra troops to beef up security during the vote.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's decision to invite Iran to a high-level conference on Afghanistan later this month has been applauded in European capitals that have long advocated a broad regional approach.

Nearly eight years after the Taliban were driven out of Kabul, Obama has conceded that the United States was not winning the war and suggested talks with the militia's moderates to promote a political resolution.

Obama told the New York Times at the weekend that reaching out to moderates had helped advance US goals in Iraq and that the same approach could, to some extent, apply to Afghanistan.

"Part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of Al-Qaeda in Iraq," Obama said.

But he recognised that the situation in Afghanistan was "more complex" than in Iraq, with more lawlessness and a "history of fierce independence among tribes."

During a full day of back-to-back meetings, Biden meets with the North Atlantic Council, the decision-making body of the alliance's 26 member states, and with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

The vice president, who arrived in Brussels late Monday, has a working lunch scheduled with EU officials and meets with Belgium's Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy before heading into talks with non-NATO partners that have troops on the ground in Afghanistan.

There are nearly 70,000 foreign troops under NATO and US command in Afghanistan fighting a Taliban insurgency alongside Afghan forces.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana has said Europe could do more in Afghanistan.

"There is a lot that can be done, it is not only militarily. It is not a military problem only," he said last week.

"We can do probably more on police, on reconstruction, in regional matters, Afghanistan is not alone, Pakistan is a very important country for the stability of Afghanistan," he said.

Australia's foreign minister said at the weekend that he expected to receive a request from the United States for more troops in the coming weeks.