Brussels  - Javier Solana, the European Union's chief diplomat, wants Thursday's vote in Afghanistan to lead to the formation of a government that can "bring the country forward".

US President Barack Obama hopes it will herald a new "phase in Afghanistan", one in which foreign security forces are no longer needed.

Since 2001, the West has invested billions of dollars, and has sacrificed more than 1,300 of its young men and women, to help Afghanistan become a functioning state.

Now, its patience is running thin.

"We have to show the Afghan people, and the people in troop- contributing nations, more light at the end of the tunnel," the new NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said in his inaugural speech to the press on August 3.

Rasmussen and other Western leaders see a direct link between the credibility of this week's vote, in which President Hamid Karzai is vying for re-election, and a safer Afghanistan.

"Helping Afghans to take greater control of their own destiny is both the right thing to do and is an important step in ensuring our shared goal of achieving sustained peace and security in Afghanistan and the region," Rasmussen said in a statement Sunday marking the loss of more than 200 British lives in Afghanistan.

Amid accusations of fraud and threats from the Taliban insurgency to cut off voters' fingers, NATO, the EU and the Vienna-based Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) are helping the Afghan government ensure that this week's presidential and provincial polls are as fair and safe as possible.

While declining to confirm any figures, NATO is believed to have committed 3,000 of its 64,500 International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) soldiers to protect voters.

However, aware that many Afghans perceive the West as interfering in their domestic affairs, NATO officials insist that the main responsibility for protecting polling stations rests with the Afghan national police and the Afghan army.

The orders for ISAF soldiers are to intervene only if local forces are unable to handle an emergency on their own.

"We don't want to give the wrong impression that NATO is running the show," one official told the German Press Agency dpa.

As if a reminder of the challenge facing NATO was ever needed, the insurgency Saturday detonated a car bomb near the alliance's headquarters in Kabul. The explosion killed seven Afghans and wounded 91 others.

While officially not taking sides in the political fray, NATO has also transported voting material across the country and has helped candidates meet voters.

Its other task is to protect the election monitoring mission of the OSCE and the EU.

Headed by Philippe Morillon, a former French general and now a member of the European Parliament, the EU's is by far the largest of the two, with a core team of 67 analysts and field staff and a further 42 short-term observers based in the capital and in seven other regional hubs.

The mission, which costs 5 million euros (7 million dollars) and seeks to be impartial, is tasked with monitoring the election campaign, the polling process and the tallying of results.

It plans to "condemn any serious breach of electoral rules and procedures". Its preliminary statement on the outcome of the vote is due on Saturday, while a final report will only be published two months after the election.

While condemning election-related violence that has "limited freedom of movement and political assembly," EU officers on the ground say the election campaign has so far taken place in "a generally dignified atmosphere, which enabled a vibrant debate."

According to the mission's 2005 report, the credibility of that year's parliamentary elections was in part undermined by a suspicious increase in the number of female registrants in Afghanistan's most socially conservative provinces - an indication of voting by proxy.

Similar concerns remain today.

"Proxy voting is a concern for us - we are aware of the fact that there are traditional areas with abnormally high registration of female voters," Agnes Doka, a mission spokeswoman, told dpa.

At the same time, EU experts concede that it is not uncommon for Afghan women to vote for who their husband says.

As Rasmussen said in his August 3 speech, "this month's elections will not be to the same standards as we expect from parliamentary votes in our allied nations. But they must be credible, first and foremost in the eyes of the Afghan population." (dpa)