Strasbourg, France - At its 60th birthday celebration in France and Germany, which ended Saturday, NATO welcomed US President Barack Obama, seated two new members and took strides toward sharing the load in its war against the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

The alliance also narrowly avoided a major embarrassment when Turkey agreed, at the last moment, to the appointment of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as its new secretary general.

The two-day summit, which was held in Strasbourg, France, and the German cities of Kehl and Baden-Baden, took place under tight security, as 25,000 police officers were deployed in the two countries to keep in check thousands of militant anti-NATO protesters.

Parts of downtown Strasbourg were filled with thick smoke as buildings were set on fire and police fired tear gas canisters. But the row over a replacement for outgoing NATO head Jaap de Hoop Scheffer produced its own heat and fumes around the negotiating table.

Obama took a leading role in the discussions and, all sides agree, offered Turkish leaders a deal they couldn't refuse, a deal that reportedly includes naming a Turk to a top NATO post.

The Turks had strongly objected to Rasmussen because of his handling of the 2005 and 2006 row over caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed that appeared in Danish media and angered large sectors of the Muslim world.

And Obama's diplomatic success with Turkey only reinforced the US president's already high standing with his allies.

Obama also came away from the summit with additional help in the war in Afghanistan, as allies pledged 3,000 additional troops to secure the upcoming Afghan elections, 100 million dollars for a fund to support the Afghan army and 500 million dollars for civilian reconstruction.

In addition, a NATO Training Mission was established within the International Security Force (ISAF) that would comprise about 2,000 instructors for Afghanistan's army and police force.

The alliance also determined to improve relations with Russia as the repercussions of last summer's invasion of Georgia by Moscow's armed forces were still being felt.

The NATO-Russia Council (NRC), established in 2002 as a forum for direct dialogue between the two sides and suspended in the wake of last year's Georgia conflict, will now be revived.

In its closing declaration, NATO urged Moscow to respect the commitments it made with respect to Georgia in the deal hammered out by then European Union head Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president.

NATO allies also agreed to develop a new strategic concept for its future missions to replace the one the alliance drew up in 1999.

The idea is to renew and reform NATO and enable it to confront such new threats as terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, cyber attacks, securing energy sources and the effect of climate change on security.

The summit officially seated Croatia and Albania as new members and welcomed co-host France back to NATO's military command structure after an absence of 43 years. The move is likely to shift the balance of power within the alliance a bit more in Europe's favour.

But the rock star welcome accorded the American president by bystanders and his allied colleagues, the leading role he took in internal disputes and the fact that he, far more than anyone else, determined the summit's agenda, made it clear that NATO remained very much under strong American influence. (dpa)