NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen met with key senators Wednesday to discuss the security posture in Afghanistan ahead of Oval Office talks with President Barack Obama.

"We have a lot on our plate," Rasmussen told reporters upon meeting Senator John Kerry and other members of his influential Foreign Relations Committee.

The group was to discuss the agenda for the summit which convenes 10 days from now in Chicago, including the "next phase in our cooperation in Afghanistan," Rasmussen said.

"Afghanistan is very much on the table, as well as other issues in the Mideast, Iran and the general direction of the NATO alliance as we go forward," Kerry said.

At the summit, NATO will be faced with the thorny issue posed by French president-elect Francois Hollande pledge to speed up his country's pullout from Afghanistan.

The Socialist leader campaigned on a promise to start bringing 3,300 French soldiers home this year, ending his country's combat role two years earlier than NATO's carefully crafted plan to fully hand security control to Afghans by 2014.

Rasmussen did not address the situation directly with reporters, instead saying NATO "will discuss how we can provide security in a time of economic austerity."

The White House has said the United States will push to modernize the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, deepen partnerships and hammer out details of the Afghanistan withdrawal at an summit.

Some 130,000 foreign troops, most from NATO nations, are fighting alongside 350,000 Afghan security personnel to help Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government reverse the Taliban-led insurgency.

On Monday, Karzai summoned the NATO commander and the US ambassador to warn that civilian casualties in military operations threatened a strategic pact he has signed with Washington.