UNITED NATIONS (AP)

Russia's aggressiveness in the east. The Islamic State group's sudden rise in the south. As Europe finds new threats close to home, it is now being asked by the United States to make a strong return to peacekeeping around the world as well.

The UN today convenes an unprecedented meeting of defence officials from more than 100 countries to seek support for the largest peacekeeping effort ever deployed, with nearly 130,000 personnel in 16 missions from Congo to the Golan Heights. They face growing threats from groups like the Islamic State that have little regard for traditional ideas of war and peace.

Following up in September, President Barack Obama will chair a meeting on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly of world leaders, with the goal of collecting countries' peacekeeping pledges after Friday's pitch by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other top officials.

Obama's envoy to the UN, Ambassador Samantha Power, this month made it clear that Europe is expected to step up and is needed "more than ever." Two decades ago, European nations contributed more than 40 percent of UN peacekeepers, she said in a speech in Brussels. It's less than 7 percent now.

This call from the United States, easily the biggest contributor to the UN's peacekeeping budget at $2.5 billion, comes as tens of thousands of troops from European and other countries emerge from years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. In her speech, Power envisioned the German and Dane helicopter pilots from Afghanistan doing similar work in Darfur, or Romanian and Czech patrols guarding bases in South Sudan.

If the UN had asked for this kind of help earlier, it would have been seen as competing with the US-led military effort of the past decade, said Jean-Marie Guehenno, a former UN peacekeeping chief and the current president of the International Crisis Group.

"Now, when the US says, 'You're our allies, and one of the best ways to show friendship is to contribute to the UN,' that's quite a signal," he told the Associated Press.

The UN, which has no standing army, now heavily relies on troops from South Asia and Africa, whose countries make up the top 10 contributors. Bangladesh led the way with 9,446 peacekeepers as of the end of February. The United States had 119, fewer than any other permanent member of the Security Council except Russia, which had 72.