Munich  - There were long faces in Munich on Sunday as world leaders debated the fate of the seven-year-old international mission in Afghanistan.

"If we had thought in 2001 that in seven and a half years we'd still be worried, we would have thought it too pessimistic," Poland's foreign minister and former defence minister Radek Sikorksi told the prestigious Munich Security Conference.

But there was worry aplenty in the hall as top soldiers and politicians from the West, Afghanistan and Pakistan grappled with the question of how to tackle a resurgent Taliban, crack down on the drugs trade and strengthen Afghanistan's fragile government.

Munich  - NATO and Afghan leaders were set to debate the future of the international mission in Afghanistan on Sunday amid tensions between Washington, Kabul and European capitals.

US National Security Advisor James Jones, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and German Defence Minister Franz-Josef Jung were to address the prestigious Munich Security Conference at a time when Western leaders are becoming increasingly critical of Karzai's regime and NATO members are struggling to raise troops to combat the Taliban.

Munich  - NATO must develop a "wartime mentality" in its operation in Afghanistan a

Kabul  - A suicide bomber detonated his vehicle near a NATO-led Turkish military convoy in Kabul city Sunday, killing himself and wounding two civilians, but causing no troop casualties, police said.

The attack took place in Company, an area on the western outskirts of Kabul, Sunday morning as the Turkish convoy was coming from the neighbouring province of Wardak, deputy provincial police chief Alishah Ahmadzai said.

"The bomber detonated his taxi car before reaching the convoy," Ahmadzai said. "The blast wounded two of our innocent people who were passing by the area at the time of the attack, but according to our information no one was hurt in the convoy."

Berlin  - Senior NATO officers responsible for fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan have rejected an order also to fight non- Taliban drug gangs, according to news reports which were confirmed by German military sources on Thursday.

A US general in Kabul and a German general overseeing NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) from Europe have told the NATO supreme commander, General John Craddock of the United States, that his order is illegal.

Jamrud, Jan. 3 : Transportation on the Landikotal Highway, the main route used for supplying rations and ammunition to the allied forces in Afghanistan, resumed after the military operation to flush out the Taliban from the area concluded on January 2.

"300 trucks, several carrying NATO supplies, passed into Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass," the Daily Times quoted local administration chief Tarq Khan, as saying.

Authorities have claimed that the `Operation Daraghlam' against the Taliban and criminals in the Khyber Agency achieved `80 percent' of its target,