German Defense Minister Peter Struck told reporters at the start of a two-day meeting in the mountain resort of Poiana Brasov that NATO's mission in Afghanistan is to stabilize the country -- not to fight international terrorism.

Struck said he opposes the proposal to integrate the NATO peacekeeping force in Afghanistan with the U.S.-commanded combat mission that is fighting remnants of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

At present, operations in Afghanistan are split between the 18,000-strong combat force and a NATO contingent half that size, which is focusing on improving security.

Struck's comments came after Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, told reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday that Washington's aim is to combine the two missions under an alliance commander, possibly as early as 2005.

Since August 2003, NATO has run a peacekeeping mission in the Afghan capital Kabul, separate from the U.S. combat mission. In recent months, NATO has expanded the mission into northern provinces in Afghanistan and is now seeking to increase its 8,000-troop force to move into a western sector.

Germany is one of the largest contributors to the peacekeeping mission with 2,500 soldiers.

Despite Germany's initial rejection of the U.S. proposal, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in an interview with the Reuters news agency that NATO will discuss integrating the two missions.

"To have two separate missions [in Afghanistan] -- OEF [Operation Enduring Freedom] and ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] -- is not the ideal model for the longer term," de Hoop Scheffer said. "And that is why -- in the operational plan, I mean -- the ambition has already been written down to integrate the two missions. So I think this is certainly what the alliance will be doing, and we'll discuss the details."

De Hoop Scheffer suggested one solution would be to have one commander for the whole operation but to maintain two missions -- for example, one with a combat function and the other with the stabilization tasks that NATO has been doing.

De Hoop Scheffer said a way could be found "of fulfilling our ambition to integrate the two missions and still respect those elements which are important in some allied nations."

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