BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked allies Friday to intensify their efforts to keep the Taliban from retaking parts of Afghanistan, and asserted a resurgence in Taliban attacks does not mean the U.S. war strategy has failed.

Rice made her appeal a day after the Bush administration said it would ask Congress for $10.6 billion to help the embattled Afghan government. The U.S. hopes its hefty increase will serve as an incentive for other countries to boost their contributions.

Taliban forces, emboldened and rearmed, launched fierce attacks across the country beginning last spring, leading to Afghanistan’s bloodiest year since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Crop production for illegal drugs also hit a new high in 2006, and relations worsened between Afghanistan and Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the fight against global terrorism.

“The violence we are seeing is not evidence that our strategy has failed, nor that the situation will improve in our absence,” Rice said in a written statement to NATO foreign ministers who gathered to plan for an expected Taliban military offensive in the spring. “It is evidence of how much we are needed.”

Separately, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan told a Pentagon news conference that the spike in violence in Afghanistan has occurred largely because an international force has taken the offensive, not because of any Taliban initiative.

The Bush administration wants NATO allies to increase money, troops and other support for the unsteady democracy in Afghanistan. It is also working to dispel European suspicion that the United States is too busy in Iraq to pay attention to the older Afghan fight.

“Every one of us must take a hard look at what more we can do to help the Afghan people, and to support one another,” Rice said.

Casualties in Afghanistan have risen sharply in recent months as the Taliban have widened military operations and suicide attacks. Some 4,000 people died in insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan last year, according to numbers from Afghan, U.S. and NATO officials.

Many allies have urged the Bush administration to keep focused on Afghanistan, and some have worried that President Bush’s plan for a 21,500-troop increase in Iraq will starve the Afghan mission.

Critics in Europe and elsewhere suggested that last year’s show of Taliban strength was proof that the U.S. focus wavered. The offensive caught U.S. and other commanders off guard, but the Taliban have not been able to extend their military success to renewed political power.

Speaking to Pentagon reporters from Bagram, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Freakley, the senior U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, said U.S. and NATO-controlled forces are meeting more resistance partly because they’re expanding operations farther into remote areas of the country to rout out insurgents.

Freakley also took issue with reports that a resurgent Taliban is on the offensive.

“It is the U.S. forces and the International Security Assistance Forces that have been on the offensive … finding the enemy, separating enemy leaders from the population and giving reconstruction opportunities, job opportunities and extending the government of Afghanistan,” he said by videoconference

“The Taliban have not achieved any of their objectives in the last year,” he said, adding they failed in their attempts to retake their former stronghold, the southern city of Kandahar, and failed in their goal to topple the government of President Hamid Karzai.

Rice convened Friday’s session to plan for another expected Taliban military offensive in the spring.

“If there is to be a ‘spring offensive,’ it must be our offensive,” Rice told the group. NATO’s top commander pledged on Friday to launch such an offensive against resurgent Taliban forces in the south and east of Afghanistan.

“Springtime in Afghanistan: Historically we’ve seen increased activity” from Taliban fighters, Gen. John Craddock told reporters at a news conference discussing NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, in Afghanistan.

Among other issues Rice raised were the divisions within the alliance on sharing the burden in Afghanistan. Troop commitments have lagged behind U.S. expectations, partly due to doubts in some European capitals about the depth of U.S. commitment, diplomats said.

The NATO-led force is about 20 percent short of the troops levels pledged by its contributing nations.

There are about 24,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the highest number since the war began in October 2001. About half are under the control of NATO, which is gradually gaining more control over operations there.

The United States is by far the largest contributor to the 34,460-member NATO force in Afghanistan, with 11,800 troops. Britain is next with 5,200.

In an interview, Afghanistan’s foreign minister said NATO and Afghan government forces could halt Taliban attacks if they received “constructive participation” from Pakistan. The two neighbors have been at odds for months over their efforts to crack down on terrorists crossing the border into Afghanistan.

“My appeal to our brothers in Pakistan is to stop interfering … to stop these powerful sectors which use terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy,” said Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta.

He praised the U.S. aid proposal and said he was not disappointed that European offers were lower, adding, “The contribution of the Europeans is increasing.”

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Associated Press writer Pauline Jelinek contributed to this report from Washington.