The US envoy to NATO has urged the Netherlands to keep its troops in volatile southern Afghanistan, saying that 2010 is a pivotal year for the international military effort there.

Ambassador Ivo Daalder praised Dutch troops for their work in Uruzgan province helping to improve the lives of some 360,000 people, and urged the government not to pull forces out just as they are having an impact.

"We are at a critical juncture in this operation, and 2010 is clearly the year in which we're either going to turn the corner and move in a fundamentally different direction and succeed, or not," he told reporters in Brussels.

"This is therefore not the time to start decreasing effort. It is the time to maintain, if not expand, the effort," he said, in remarks released on Wednesday.

Around 1,950 Dutch troops are deployed in Afghanistan, according to NATO figures from last month. The Netherlands has been committing troops to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) since 2006.

Its mission is set to expire in 2010, and while the government had announced it would no longer be the lead nation in Uruzgan as of August 1, it is still deciding what form, if any, its involvement will take.

"Our continued effort for another few years will be the difference between success and potential failure," said Daalder, who recently visited the Dutch operation in the provincial capital Tirin Kot.

"The people of the Netherlands, and the government of the Netherlands, need to take into account what they're doing to those 360,000 people," he said.

The Netherlands is rethinking its position just as the United States and its allies launch a major military and civilian "surge" into Afghanistan, as part of a new strategy to overcome the Taliban and Al Qaeda-led insurgency.

"The United States did not decide to send 30,000 troops, the vast majority in the south, in order to take over from the Dutch and the Canadians," Daalder said. "We sent them to do a job."

Canada is set to withdraw its troops at the end of next year.

Daalder underlined that no other nation would be able to do the job as well, given that the Dutch had established close relations with the Afghans in Uruzgan, an area where opium production is also high.

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