NATO seeks to replace Marine Afghan mission

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO allies have yet to come up with replacements for a key deployment of some 3,000 U.S. Marines due to leave Afghanistan later this year, alliance officials said after talks on Friday.

The Pentagon sent the Marines to Afghanistan ahead of an expected rise in violence this year, but the troops are scheduled to return home in November and the United States is not expected to offer to keep them there any longer.

"I have no complete indications yet about back-filling," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a news conference after allied defense ministers met in Brussels, using the military term for replacing departing troops.

"I would like to see that we find a way of following up on their good work on the ground."

British Defense Minister Des Browne said the Marines had produced an "astonishing effect" in combating Taliban insurgents in the southern Helmand province where Britain operates, and said Britain was involved in discussions about replacements.

"We don't intend to give up what we have created," he said of what he described as major losses suffered recently by the Taliban in one of their traditional heartlands.

France has agreed to send troops to Kapisa province northeast of Kabul around July in a move that is intended to free up U.S. forces there to go south.

However Browne said he understood those U.S. troops would go to Kandahar province, like Helmand in the south, and that such a redeployment was separate from efforts to replace the Marines.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has seen its troop strength swell to some 52,000 in recent months but commanders say it is still under-resourced and struggles to hold areas captured from insurgents.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates noted that despite some progress made in the war, the casualty rate among allied forces in Afghanistan recently topped that in Iraq. He said he urged his European counterparts at the talks to make good on pledges made at a NATO summit in April to plug the ISAF shortfalls.

"I expect government decisions and actions to match government rhetoric," he told a news conference. "It is important that we live up to our pledges in both the civilian and military spheres necessary for success in Afghanistan."

(Reporting by Mark John)