NATO chief: Developments now favor alliance war effort in Afghanistan.

NATO: Developments now favor alliance war effort.

BRUSSELS — NATO leaders declared Friday that the alliance had regained the initiative in the Afghan war, promising that the gains could result in a handover of security responsibilities to local authorities by year’s end.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged his alliance counterparts to seize the moment and to provide the resources needed to accelerate efforts to bolster Afghan security forces. NATO wants Afghan troops to replace its forces in the war against the Taliban, thus providing the linchpin of the alliance’s exit strategy.

“Our effort is moving in right direction (but) the road ahead will be long and hard,” Gates said after a meeting of NATO’s 28 defense ministers. “I hope that by the end of year, we will be able to demonstrate that we are making progress throughout the country.”

Gates urged countries who are not committing combat troops to Afghanistan to contribute more instructors to train the expanding Afghan police and army. More trainers would step up “the pace that we can proceed with transition,” he said.

NATO officials say they have been stymied because it is difficult to find qualified people to train foreign forces.

Earlier Friday, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told ministers that the Afghan government and international authorities would soon agree on how to start handing over responsibility for security, “province by province.”

His optimism comes despite troubles with the military campaign. Top commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal conceded Thursday that a planned offensive in the city of Kandahar has been delayed because the process of gaining local support is taking longer than planned. The delay came after an inconclusive campaign to reassert government authority in the provincial town of Marjah.

Meanwhile, NATO announced it had opened an alternate supply route to Afghanistan via Russia and central Asia — a critical development that gives the alliance the ability to bypass the previous ambush-prone main routes through Pakistan.

A statement said the first trainload of supplies for the alliance’s 122,000-strong force arrived in Afghanistan on June 9.

Until now, only individual alliance members, such as Germany and the United States, were allowed to use the so-called northern route. Although Russia offered to open its territory to NATO as a whole, negotiations over transit rights between the alliance and Central Asian states took several months to complete.

The opening of the route is important because it signals Russian willingness to indirectly support the NATO-led mission. Moscow has been warmer to the mission’s success in recent years, fearing that a NATO defeat in Afghanistan would cause further problems for Russia.

Associated Press writer Eileen Shim contributed to this report.