The U.S. government is looking for up to 7,000 additional troops for Afghanistan from its NATO allies. But few countries in Europe are rushing to fill the void. Germany and France want to wait until the Afghanistan conference at the end of January.

For months, pressure had been growing on U.S. President Barack Obama to reveal just what his oft-mentioned, revamped Afghanistan strategy would be. Now that he has announced it - a U.S. troop increase of 30,000 combined with a timeline for the beginning of withdrawal - the focus has shifted. Now it is time for America's European allies to make pledges of their own. But on Wednesday, concrete pledges of additional troops were few and far between.

The Obama White House has already ratcheted down expectations for America's NATO allies, saying that it hopes for between 5,000 and 7,000 additional troops from all partners combined. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Wednesday that he was confident that non-U.S. NATO members would pledge at least an additional 5,000 soldiers.

But reactions from many European leaders were much more reserved. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm welcomed Obama's timeline for withdrawal saying it was "correct and sensible." But on the question of whether Germany would send more troops, he preferred to point to the Afghanistan conference set to take place at the end of January in London. After the conference, Germany will decide "whether and if so what kind of additional efforts we might undertake."