Budapest - NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on Thursday said the global financial crisis should not stand in the way of desired increases in military spending by the alliance's member states.

"The global financial crisis will certainly add pressure to national budgets, but we must defend our joint values and prepare for facing challenges," de Hoop Scheffer told the Hungarian daily Nepszabadsag.

"We need to do more, not only through increased military spending, but also by developing the efficiency of our forces," he said.

Brussels - NATO defence ministers meet on Thursday and Friday amid concerns that a "Vietnam Syndrome" may undermine the alliance's efforts in Afghanistan.

The talks in Budapest come just days after the departing commander of the British forces in Afghanistan, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, warned that NATO would never defeat the Taliban.

Brussels - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Sunday condemned the bomb attack that killed more than 50 people in a hotel in Islamabad, calling the act "grotesque."

Speaking for the military alliance, NATO General Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said: "I condemn in the strongest possible terms the terrorist bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad."

Kabul  - An Afghan district governor along with his two bodyguards were killed mistakenly by NATO-led Australian troops in southern Afghanistan while five police officers and three Taliban militants were killed in a clash and a roadside bombing, officials said Thursday.

Rozi Khan Barekzai, governor of the Chora district in Uruzgan province, was called Wednesday to a friend's house in Trin Kot, the provincial capital, because the friend believed his house was surrounded by Taliban militants, said Gholub Wardak, the province's deputy police chief.

"Actually the man's house was surrounded by Australian forces, and when Rozi Khan and his men arrived there, the foreign forces mistook them for Taliban and opened fire at them," Wardak said.

Brussels - The United States "wants to work with Pakistan" to boost security along its border with Afghanistan despite the row over US attacks into Pakistani territory, a senior US official said Wednesday in Brussels.

"We want to work with the Pakistanis because we know that long-term stability and security is only going to come from them," US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Kabul  - Afghan and NATO-led troops killed 11 suspected Taliban and detained 20 others in separate clashes and airstrikes in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said Tuesday.

Ten insurgents were killed in combat with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Wardak province south-west of the capital, the alliance said in a statement.

The militants fired rockets at an ISAF base in Sayed Abad, on Kabul-Kandahar highway near Kabul city, the statement said, adding that NATO forces responded with artillery and close air support.

"After positive identification of the insurgents, aircraft engaged the insurgents with gunfire," the statement said.