Foreign Secretary David Miliband has said he hopes an international conference on Afghanistan will spur a shift in the burden of security in the country to the Afghan government.
Mr Miliband was speaking in Washington at a hearing at the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee about the conference the British government is hosting next week.
He told the US politicians he hoped that the conference would also provide a boost for an Afghan plan to lure Taliban militants away from violence.
Mr Miliband said he expected new contributions from the international community of troops and civilian experts.
At the hearing, US special envoy Richard Holbrooke was also outlining the US strategy for stabilising Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Mr Miliband also warned that Nato was far from reaching its goals of training a competent Afghan police force but had begun to make progress, and he has confidence in the Afghan interior ministry.
But Mr Miliband said, however, that drug use and the poor education of recruits were hampering training.
"I think it is important to be very, very sober about how long it will take to turn the police around," he said.
Britain has said it hopes to achieve a consensus at the conference that security control of certain numbers of provinces should be handed over by specific dates.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has recommended that security control in five provinces be handed over by the end of 2010.
