22 Taliban Killed in Afghanistan Fighting

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, right, meets with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on Wednesday, July 26, 2006. Iran has sought closer ties with the ex-Soviet republics in Central Asia since they gained independence with the 1991 Soviet collapse. (AP Photo/Misha Japaridze) (Misha Japaridze - AP)

No security forces were hurt in the violence, officials said.

The increase in violence comes as about 8,000 NATO forces _ mostly British, Canadian and Dutch _ deploy in the south as part of an alliance expansion. NATO also has troops in Kabul and northern and western Afghanistan.

In Brussels, Belgium, NATO nations formally approved the move into the southern provinces. The alliance's top military commander, U.S. Gen. James L. Jones, will begin taking command of the region from U.S.-led coalition troops this month, officials said.

Francesc Vendrell, special European Union representative for Afghanistan, said there would be 18,000 NATO troops nationwide along with a similar number of U.S. forces _ the biggest foreign military presence in the post-Taliban period.

With NATO bolstering its presence, the United States is expected to withdraw several thousand troops.

"We are not going to tolerate any haven for terrorist elements in Afghanistan," Vendrell said in Kabul. "We will stay as long as it takes to get this issue solved."

However, Vendrell said the NATO mission to pacify and rebuild the region would have been easier had troops deployed three or four years earlier _ before the Taliban regrouped and local disenchantment set in over official corruption and continuing poverty.

He also said the U.S.-led war on terrorism launched in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks had focused too much on al-Qaida.

"I think perhaps they were too single-minded on one objective without seeing the broader picture, perhaps not realizing that it was not simply a matter of al-Qaida that had produced the Taliban," he said.

In addition to military action, Vendrell said stabilizing the south required efforts to improve governance and development. Corrupt police and government officials are involved in the region's booming drugs trade.

Western officials say militants in the south are a loose alliance of hardcore Taliban, drug gangs and ethnic Pashtun villagers paid to fight Afghan and foreign forces. Afghanistan produces about 90 percent of the world's opium, and much of it is grown and processed into heroin in southern provinces.

In the weeks preceding the coalition's handover to NATO, more than 10,000 U.S.-led troops have fanned out across southern Afghanistan, killing more than 600 suspected Taliban militants since June 10, according to the coalition.

At least 19 coalition soldiers also have been killed in the same period, according to an Associated Press count based on coalition information.

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Associated Press reporters Fisnik Abrashi in Kabul, Noor Khan in Kandahar and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.