RIGA, Nov 29: NATO leaders expressed solidarity with insurgency-hit Afghanistan on Tuesday and all committed to allowing their troops to be used in emergencies, an alliance official said.

At their summit in Latvia, the leaders sent Afghanistan a `strong message of determination and solidarity while stressing that this is NATO's number one priority’, the official said.

He said the leaders made a `clear commitment to the long term for this operation’, during a working dinner that lasted two hours and focused uniquely on NATO's troubled and most ambitious mission ever.

NATO is leading some 32,000 troops from 37 nations under the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which has been trying since 2003 to spread the influence of President Hamid Karzai’s weak central government.

But its operation has been hampered by a reluctance to provide reinforcements to stave off the Taliban-led resistance, which has claimed some 3,700 lives this year -- four times as many as last year.

Contributors have also imposed strict conditions on the use of their forces, which have frustrated commanders on the ground when they need to move troops quickly to flashpoints.

The official said that NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer had received confirmation `clearly with all 26 that in emergency situations they will all come to the support of each other’.

He did not say what kind of problem would constitute an emergency but said that `the threshold has to rest with the force commander’ on what one might be.

He said the leaders `are going to put their forces at his disposal’. NATO’s military commander, US General James Jones, also said that he had received answers from NATO nations on what their current restrictions were, and that a number of the dreaded caveats had now been lifted.—AFP