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By David Brunnstrom and Kristin Roberts

BUDAPEST, Oct 10 (Reuters) - NATO allies reached a compromise deal on Friday on a U.S. call for direct attacks on the Afghan drugs trade that the alliance's military commander says is key to bringing security, a NATO diplomat said.

NATO operations commander Gen. John Craddock has asked for the alliance force in Afghanistan to be allowed to attack laboratories, trafficking networks and drug lords to stem a trade that helps fund the Taliban insurgency.

"There is a deal," the NATO diplomat said, without giving details.

The United States backs the plan but some European allies say the mission is outside the scope of the alliance's agreed mandate in Afghanistan. Germany said the mission could worsen violence and put troops at greater risk.

Craddock and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates argued tackling the narcotics business was a fundamental part of the strategy to defeat the Taliban and allow the Afghan government to establish control throughout the country.

"NATO is charged with a safe and secure environment," Craddock told Reuters in an interview on Thursday night. "You cannot have a safe and secure environment with a scourge of narcotics rampant."

The top U.S. military officer, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, warned on Thursday that Afghan violence would escalate in 2009 unless the United States and other countries moved quickly to counter an intensifying Taliban insurgency with troops and assistance.

Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters the United States, NATO and other countries had failed so far to forge the kind of strategic unity necessary to stem the rise in violence.

Craddock blamed NATO allies' failure to deliver needed resources for commanders' inability to control violence in Afghanistan that has soared for more than two years due to a resurgent Taliban that now dominates swaths of territory. (Editing by Dale Hudson)

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