WASHINGTON : The Netherlands and Britain have agreed to lengthen command rotations in southern Afghanistan in response to concerns that short tours are hampering military operations against the Taliban, a Pentagon spokesman said Wednesday.

Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said the allies agreed in telephone conversations with US Defence Secretary Robert Gates to extend their command rotations from nine to 12 months when Canada hands over command of the south to the Netherlands in November.

The agreement falls short of a proposal favoured by General Dan McNeill, the commander of the NATO-led force in Afghanistan, that a single country be put in charge of military operations in the turbulent south.

"I am in favour of a dialogue by the policymakers and the politicians about the consideration of one country leading a multinational headquarters in the south," McNeill told reporters in a videoconference earlier Wednesday.

Command of Regional Command-South, or RC-South, as the southern sector is known, rotates between Canada, the Netherlands and Britain. The United States will assume command there in November 2010, Morrell said.

"We believe that this new arrangement -- and our allies do as well, because they have agreed to it -- will provide greater predictability, continuity, stability in this volatile but vitally important region of Afghanistan," Morrell said.

McNeill and others have complained that the lack of continuity has undercut the effectiveness of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in the south.

Not only do the commands currently change hands every nine months, but European troops that serve in the sector rotate out every three to six months.

"It is sometimes a little difficult for them (the Afghan forces) to change from one culture to the next," McNeill said.

Morrell said the new agreement sets the command rotations through 2010, when the United States assumes command in the south. What happens after that, he said, "is still open to discussion."

Another key unresolved issue is whether to continue having two US four star generals responsible for the 33,000 US troops in Afghanistan.

General John Bantz Craddock, NATO's supreme commander, is responsible for the 50,000-strong ISAF, which includes 15,000 US troops.

General David Petraeus, who has been tapped to be the next head of the US Central Command, will be responsible for another 18,000 US troops conducting counter-terrorism and training missions in Afghanistan.

"That is probably the last large remaining issue to be dealt with, whether it makes sense to, sort of, dual hat a commander down there or keep the command divided," Morrell said.

"And that is something that is being discussed, has been discussed. There is no imminent movement on that," he said.

- AFP /ls