CASTEAU, Belgium -

NATO's top commander, Gen. James L. Jones, on Thursday called for allied nations to send reinforcements to southern

Afghanistan, saying the coming weeks could be decisive in the fight against the Taliban.

Jones will meet top generals from the 26 NATO nations Friday and Saturday in Warsaw, Poland, in an attempt to generate hundreds of troops, with planes and helicopters needed for the mission.

"We have to give the commander additional insurance in terms of some forces that can be there, perhaps temporarily, to make sure that we can carry the moment," he said.

Jones acknowledged that NATO had been surprised by the "level of intensity" of Taliban attacks since the alliance moved into the southern region in July and by the fact the insurgents were prepared to stand and fight rather than deploy their usual hit-and-run tactics.

On Thursday, Taliban militants took over a police station in the remote southern town of Garmser in Helmand province after officers fled for a second time in two months, police said. Taliban forces briefly held the town for two days in July before coalition troops retook it.

Jones said, however, that he was confident that NATO troops could win the war.

"In the relatively near future, certainly before the winter, we will see this decisive moment in the region turn in favor of the troops that represent the government," Jones said at NATO's military headquarters in southern Belgium.

He told reporters he was confident the meeting in Warsaw would muster helicopters, transport planes and several hundred "flexible" reserve troops able to move quickly around the region in support of the operation against the Taliban.

"It will help us to reduce casualties and bring this to a successful conclusion in a short period of time," he said. "This is not a desperate move, it is more of an insurance package."

Jones said he wanted to "destroy" Taliban fighters now confronting the NATO mission before they head back into the mountains with the onset of winter within the next few weeks.

Although Jones said he was confident allies would respond to his appeal at the Warsaw meeting, he did acknowledge that nations have been reluctant to commit troops to the NATO force, which has sustained increasing casualties in the last weeks.

NATO's Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer backed Jones' call for allies to strengthen the NATO force, which currently has about 20,000 troops.

"All allies should think how they can help," de Hoop Scheffer told reporters in Brussels.

Jones criticized the international community for not matching the military effort in Afghanistan with more economic help, assistance building up the police and judicial services and, in particular, help Afghan authorities tackle the country's burgeoning narcotics problem.

"The future of Afghanistan will not be determined by the military," he said.

He complained that aid programs to Afghanistan were "in some stage of life support" and insisted civilian aid was vital to stabilize the country and enable an exit strategy for the international military force.

Since January, 21 NATO troops have died and there have been an equal number of accidental deaths, Jones said. The casualty rate has shot up since NATO forces took control of southern Afghanistan in August, replacing a much smaller U.S. military operation in the region and placing large numbers of international troops in the Taliban's heartland.

"It's something akin to poking a bee hive and the bees are now swarming," Jones said. "The violence that is ensuing is a contest that's going to decide in which way that region is going to go."

Jones said Taliban casualties "far outweigh" those suffered by NATO and he questioned whether the insurgents would be able to maintain their attacks.

"I do not think that ... they have an unlimited amount of people," he said. "They are not going to take casualties at this rate for a long period of time."

ATLANTA - Terrorists today would have a tougher time plotting and carrying out attacks like the ones of Sept. 11 because of security improvements in the past five years,

President Bush said Thursday.

There's no way to know if the attacks would have been prevented by the changes, Bush said, but he contended the nation is safer than in September 2001.

Keeping his focus on national security leading up to Monday's anniversary of the attacks and November's congressional elections, Bush said more still needs to be done to stop the terrorist threat.

He pressed Congress to take quick action on two new laws — legislation proposed Wednesday by the White House that would allow terror suspects to be tried by a military commission and a bill that would give specific authority for his anti-terror eavesdropping program.

Bush initially resisted eavesdropping legislation on the grounds that the once top-secret program was already legal and that legislation could expose sensitive details.

But some leading members of Congress disagreed, and a federal judge in Detroit ruled last month that the program violated rights to free speech and privacy as well as constitutional separation of powers.

"A series of protracted legal challenges would put a heavy burden on this critical and vital program," Bush said in a speech to the conservative Georgia Public Policy Foundation. "The surest way to keep the program is to get explicit approval from the United States Congress."

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid accused Bush of trying to scare Americans into voting Republican in the midterm elections with his speeches. He said the president's announcement Wednesday that he was transferring 14 terror suspects from secret

CIA prisons to military custody so they can be tried before military panels was also politically timed.

"He's had years to bring these murders to justice, and he's waited until now — two months before an election — to do it?" Reid said. "It's a cynical but typical move from the campaigner in chief."

Bush said the United States has been making progress against terrorists in the past five years, beginning with the unsuccessful mission of the terrorists on United Flight 93, which crashed into a field in Pennsylvania when passengers fought back. "They delivered America its first victory in the war on terror," the president said to sustained applause.

"Many Americans look at these events and ask the same question: Five years after 9/11, are we safer?" Bush said. "The answer is: Yes, America is safer."

Bush said that's because his administration has filled gaps in the country's defenses that the terrorists exploited.

He used the example of two hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who had come to the attention of the CIA before they helped crash American Flight 77 into the

Pentagon but still were able to enter the United States.

Today, Bush said, intelligence officials would put known suspects like al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar on a watch list that would be accessible at airports, consulates, border crossings and for state and local law enforcement. The men would have face-to-face interviews today to get visas and would be fingerprinted and screened against a database of known or suspected terrorists.

Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were preparing for the attack while living in California, making phone calls to planners overseas. Bush said today, the National Security Agency monitors international calls "such as those between the al-Qaida operatives secretly in the United States and planners of the 9/11 attacks."

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, al-Hazmi, al-Mihdhar and 17 others were allowed to board their flights even though some of them were flagged by the passenger prescreening system. At the time, rules required only that their checked baggage be held until they boarded the planes.

Some of the hijackers also set off metal detectors. Security screeners manually checked them with handheld devices, but allowed them to board without verifying what had set off the alarms.

Bush said improved screening by the Transportation Security Administration, an increased number of federal air marshals, hardened cockpit doors and pilots trained to carry firearms would help stop a similar plot today.

"Even if all the steps I've outlined this morning had been taken before 9/11, no one can say for sure that we would have prevented the attack," Bush said. "We can say that if America had these reforms in place in 2001, the terrorists would have found it harder to plan and finance their operations, harder to slip into the country undetected, and harder to board the airplanes and take control of the cockpits, and succeed in striking their targets."

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