FRANKFURT, February 4 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - NATO wants to significantly boost its troop numbers in Afghanistan and increase the number of civilian reconstruction teams outside the capital Kabul, a German newspaper reported Wednesday, February 4.

The North Atlantic alliance has been discussing putting as many as 14,000 troops on the ground, up from just over 6,000 currently, and increasing from 10 to 18 the number of reconstruction teams, the Frankfurter Allgemeine daily quoted diplomats as saying.

A NATO spokeswoman in Brussels dismissed the German article as "pure speculation," stressing that the alliance was still working on its operational plans.

"There are no numbers yet," she added.

The German paper said the issue, including plans to divide Afghanistan into four or five patrol zones, would be a main point of discussion at an informal NATO meeting on Friday, February 6, combined with the weekend Munich security conference.

In its first mission outside Europe, NATO took command last August of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which was set up in December 2001 after the ousting of the ruling Taliban regime.

Its 19 member states have agreed to expand ISAF beyond the capital Kabul, by setting up the provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs), one of which has just been established in the northern city of Kunduz.

According to ISAF, about 6,100 soldiers are deployed in Afghanistan, with most in Kabul and about 200 in Kunduz.

A 12,000-strong U.S.-led force of mostly American troops, separate from the NATO-led peacekeepers, is hunting remnants of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in the southern and eastern Afghanistan.

The newspaper said plans are afoot to put those troops -- Operation Enduring Freedom -- under NATO control.

This is an option which the United States signaled at a December meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels.

The NATO spokeswoman said no action was imminent on this front.

"At some point" the alliance will discuss possible synergies between ISAF and Operation Enduring Freedom, she said.

"But there is no question of talking about a merger between the two forces," she added.

The German report also referred to a project to build an Afghan headquarters for Eurocorps, a five-nation military alliance that German Defense Minister Peter Struck has said would be ready to take its turn at leading ISAF by the end of the year.

A U.S. congresswoman visiting Kabul last week said that Washington would like to see an expansion of the NATO-led international peacekeeping force but without reducing the number of U.S.-led coalition troops there.