Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns made the call as the military alliance finalized plans to help after the deadly quake, which has left tens of thousands dead and millions homeless.

"We have a lot of allies next door," he said referring to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, to which Germany and France are the biggest contributors.

"It is certainly our strong hope that those allies step up with the provision of equipement especially," he added, noting that Pakistan in particular needs helicopters and earth-moving equipement.

The NATO-led ISAF, deployed to keep the peace in the violence-scarred country after the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, also includes forces from Turkey, Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain.

Burns was speaking ahead of a meeting of NATO ambassadors to decide how the 26-member alliance can respond to a Pakistani request, in particular for rescue and cargo helicopters and other equipment such as tents, blankets and food.

"We hope today NATO will be able to ... chip in in a very big way and we expect that will be the result," the US official said.

NATO, which has in recent years expanded well beyond its traditional European theatre of operations, helped ship European aid to the United States last month after the deadly Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast.

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.