By Matthew Champion and Alex Stevenson

Britain is demanding its Nato allies "step up to the plate" and commit troops to fighting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

Britain's Nato allies should "step up to the plate" by committing more troops to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, John Hutton said this morning.

UK and US officials have been holding behind-closed-doors talks about a lack of manpower for weeks, and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has now gone public with its concerns.

It wants troops from other, particularly European, Nato countries to be deployed to Afghanistan as soon as possible.

"Soft power is not going to beat al-Qaida and the Taliban. We don't have the right logistics, we don't have the right support package," Mr Hutton said at a Whitehall briefing this morning.

Mr Hutton is due to give a speech later today where he will underline the need for Nato reinforcements in Afghanistan, eight years after a US-led coalition toppled the Taliban regime.

"I hope my speech will have an effect with the Europeans. It is not right for the Americans to do all the heavy lifting," the defence secretary continued.

"Nato has to stand together. We do not believe at the moment Nato members are doing this efficiently and effectively."

Deputy chief of defence staff Lieutenant General Peter Wall said the impact of additional troops would allow the army "to sustain multiple lines of operations concurrently".

"We really want to increase our tempo and the way we want to do that is to have more working points," he explained.

UK forces are expected to withdraw from Iraq by the second half of this year as they end their overwatch responsibilities for Iraqi security forces in the south of the country.

It is not yet clear how many will be immediately redeployed to Afghanistan, where Britain currently has around 8,000 personnel in active service.

Since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan 139 UK servicemen and women have been killed in theatre, while the death-toll from the Iraq war stands at 178.