BRUSSELS, Belgium – NATO plans to enlarge its efforts to improve Iraq’s fledgling security forces by opening a base near Baghdad that will train 1,000 Iraqi officers each year, defense ministers gathered here said yesterday.

By September, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization plans to have completed a headquarters at Ar Rustimiyah near Baghdad, where alliance officers will run a program training Iraqi troops to help quell the country’s violent insurgency.

The headquarters will be funded jointly by NATO, the Iraqi government, and the American military’s training command in Iraq, which is led by U.S. Army Lieutenant General David H. Petraeus. The general was in Brussels yesterday to discuss plans for the training mission.

There are currently 121 NATO officers in Baghdad providing training for Iraqi forces from the defense and interior ministries, alliance officials said. They expect the number of officers to grow over the summer.

It has been nearly a year since NATO pledged to participate in the training of Iraqi troops. The alliance’s mission represents just a small fraction of the overall training effort, which the Pentagon considers its top priority in Iraq.

The Atlantic alliance is also planning to expand its reach in Afghanistan. NATO troops currently operate mostly in the Kabul region and western Afghanistan, and there are plans to push the alliance-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, into southern Afghanistan, which was once the Taliban’s base of operations.

The ISAF troops, who now number more than 8,000, have been operating in Afghanistan since 2002 under a mandate from the United Nations, though for the first two years they limited their mission primarily to Kabul, the capital. NATO took over command of the force in 2003.

The alliance also made official yesterday its decision to participate in a mission airlifting African peacekeeping troops to Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region.

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld praised NATO’s efforts to operate beyond its traditional European borders, saying these missions help the alliance remain relevant in the post-Cold War world.

“NATO has great promise today, greater than in some time,” Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Mr. Rumsfeld left Brussels yesterday evening, cutting short by a day his weeklong trip through Asia and Europe. Pentagon officials traveling with him said Mr. Rumsfeld shortened the trip in part to be in Washington, D.C., for the visit of President Roh of South Korea.