"This is a new NATO, a NATO transformed," said alliance Secretary General George Robertson in welcoming the ministers. "A NATO able to meet its commitments when times are tough from the Straits of Gibraltar through the Balkans to southern Turkey."

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is leading his country's delegation, used a speech in Germany Wednesday to call for transatlantic unity after the bruising disputes over Iraq that divided the 19-member alliance.

A senior US official said NATO had undergone a "near-death experience" in February, when three anti-war countries blocked the Alliance from providing defensive support for Turkey ahead of the Iraq conflict.

"But we've healed an awful lot in a short time," said another diplomat.

US officials pointed to recent agreements by NATO to take command of peacekeepers in Afghanistan and to support Poland in leading an 8,000-strong multinational division in Iraq as evidence that the allies are getting back to business.

"It would be pretty hard for Poland to do it without NATO's support," said a NATO official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Spanish Defense Minister Federico Trillo and his Polish counterpart Jerzy Smajdninsky were to agree here on a plan to rotate command of the division's sector in Iraq, Spanish press reports said.

The United States has made no secret of its wish for NATO to be even more involved.

"It is really a matter of attitude, of the vision the countries bring to the transatlantic relationship and to the challenge we all face in the years ahead," Rumsfeld said in Garmisch, Germany before the NATO meeting.

Rumsfeld and his British counterpart Geoff Hoon will brief their fellow ministers on the situation on the ground in Iraq.

NATO officials also expect an agreeement to emerge at this meeting on an overhaul of NATOs command structure to reorient the alliance from a traditional defense of Europe to long distance crisis intervention missions.

The new command structure dovetails with US plans to realign its forces worldwide, scaling back the heavy US ground forces that have stood guard against invasion in western Europe since World War II.

The alliance agreed in May 2002 that NATO should go "out of area" -- beyond its traditional European theatre of activities -- and culminating in a landmark summit in Prague last November which was dubbed the alliance's "transformation summit."

NATO will replace two strategic commands -- one in Europe, one in the US -- with a single operational commander based in Europe and a "transformation commander" based in the US, officials said.

Regional commands in Europe are expected to be replaced with "combined joint task forces" based in the Netherlands and Italy and a sea-based joint task force in Portugal.

Although based in Europe, they will set up to move to distant theaters in a crisis with troops assigned to them for six month rotations.

The Brussels meeting is also expected to agree the "military concept" for a new NATO Response Force (NRF), comprising more than 20,000 crack troops ready to deploy in days worldwide.

The ministers also will be discussing a successor to NATO head George Robertson, who steps down in December after four years at the helm of the world's premier military alliance.

The frontrunners are Portugal's Antonio Vitorino and Norwegian Defense Minister Kristin Krohn Devold, who if successful would be the first woman in charge of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Rumsfeld met Wednesday evening with Vitorino, an EU commissioner.

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