General David McKiernan, who commands NATO and US forces in Afghanistan, said there were not enough military forces in southern Afghanistan to protect the population against a Taliban insurgency.

Asked how soon the new administration would act to provide those forces, McKiernan said, "Hopefully quickly, but I don't know."

The general has requested four additional combat brigades as well as support forces -- about 20,000 troops, which would raise US forces levels in the country to more than 50,000 troops.

One brigade is due to arrive in January, and the current administration has promised two more as soon as they can be freed up through reductions of US forces in Iraq.

Obama campaigned on a pledge to shift US forces from Iraq to Afghanistan, which he sees as the central front of the US war on terrorism.

Speaking at the Atlantic Council, a foreign policy group, McKiernan indicated that the United States and its NATO allies could still prevail in Afghanistan with an influx of troops and resources but "it takes much longer."

"It comes at much greater price in human suffering and resource expenditure," he said.

He took issue with a US intelligence assessment's characterization of Afghanistan as being in a "downward spiral."

But he acknowledged that the campaign was "uneven" and conditions in four southern provinces "aren't improving fast enough for anyone's liking."

The general cautioned against a strategy that shifts power to the tribes, arguing that the complexities of tribal relationships in Afghanistan were far greater than in Iraq.

"I think what does have great merit, great potential is similarly a bottom up, community approach to security," he said.

McKiernan also said the US and Afghan forces were coordinating more closely with the Pakistani Frontier Corps along Afghanistan's eastern border.

"We exchange frequencies, we exchange intelligence, we have a Predator feed going down" to a border coordination center where it is shared with Pakistani and Afghan military, he said.

"I'm cautiously optimistic and we are doing things today on the ground that we weren't even talking about five or six months ago," he said.

The US military recently launched a coordinated operation with Pakistani forces to put pressure on insurgents on both sides of Afghanistan's wild eastern frontier, a US military commander said earlier Tuesday.

Dubbed "Operation Lionheart," the operation takes cooperation between US, Afghan and Pakistani forces to "the next level" in terms of intelligence sharing and coordination, said Colonel John Spiszer.

Spiszer said his troops were working along the Kunar River valley and up into the mountain passes along the border to intercept and ambush insurgents trying to escape from Pakistani operations in its Bajaur Agency.

Spiszer, who has about 3,000 US troops in an area that encompasses four Afghan border provinces, said he did not have enough troops but would get more with the arrival of a brigade from the 10th Mountain Division early next year.

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