AUSTRALIA is in Afghanistan for the "long haul", Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on a surprise visit to the country, which is battling an intensifying insurgency led by Taliban extremists.

Rudd held talks with President Hamid Karzai hours after French President Nicolas Sarkozy also made an unannounced visit to meet his soldiers with a NATO-led force of nearly 40 nations helping to fight extremism.

"One of the messages I delivered to His Excellency the president today is that Australia is here in Afghanistan for a long haul," Mr Rudd said.

"Over the next several months, I would also be encouraging other friends and partners and allies in NATO to continue their commitments to this country and where possible extend them," he said.

Australia has denied media reports last weekend that it would keep its nearly 900 troops in Afghanistan longer than the scheduled end of their mission in August next year, saying no decision had been made yet.

But Mr Rudd's Labor Party has "indicated for some time that they would consider further reasonable requests for military assistance in Afghanistan," a spokeswoman said.

The prime minister, on his first visit here since being elected last month, said he had visited Australian troops based in the south-central province of Uruzgan before arriving in the capital, Kabul.

Mr Karzai thanked Australia for its reconstruction and security work in the province, one of Afghanistan's most volatile and a former stronghold of Taliban extremists.

Rudd said bringing security to Uruzgan was a challenge that could achieved.

"I'm confident our forces in partnership with our friends in the Afghan National Army, we'll achieve further success in future in securing that important province for long-term stability," he said.

The Australian troops in Uruzgan work alongside a deployment of 1650 soldiers from the Netherlands in NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which numbers more than 40,000 troops in all.

The Dutch government announced last month it would extend its mission until December 2010. It had been due to expire in August 2008.

This year has been the bloodiest in an insurgency launched soon after the Taliban were removed from power in late 2001 for harbouring al-Qaida.

Daily newspaper The Australian reported Monday that Rudd's new government had warned NATO and its allies that they would lose the war against hardline Taliban forces unless they urgently changed tactics.

The United States has also announced that a review is under way.

Mr Karzai has been calling for more focus on militant bases outside of Afghanistan, notably in Pakistan, while there has been increased emphasis this year on training the Afghani forces and promoting reconciliation.

France's Mr Sarkozy said during his six-hour visit that the international effort to rid the country of extremism could not afford to fail.

"It is absolutely necessary that Afghanistan does not become a state which falls in the hands of terrorists, as we saw with the Taliban," he said.

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi is also expected to visit in the coming days.

A NATO summit in Bucharest in April is set to review efforts to help Afghanistan end the insurgency and establish democracy.

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