BRUSSELS, Aug 25 (Reuters) - European Union foreign ministers will hold emergency talks on Friday on troop contributions to a U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon amid growing pressure on their countries to make firm commitments.

Italy has offered up to 3,000 troops and France boosted its pledge to 2,000 on the eve of the Brussels meeting. Optimism was rising that others would raise so far meagre contributions under prompting from the United States, Israel and others.

"The commitment of the French, when it's combined with that of the Italians, will I think generate later today in Brussels some quite significant, although smaller commitments from other European countries," Mark Malloch Brown, deputy U.N. secretary-general, told BBC radio.

"So we are now well on our way and we will have extra soldiers on the ground during the course of next week."

EU president Finland, which will chair Friday's meeting of the bloc's 25 foreign ministers and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said the EU's credibility was at stake and that it must show it can deploy rapidly to protect a fragile ceasefire.

"The main thrust of the force should be there within a few weeks because every day there is a risk that the ceasefire could unravel," Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja told reporters in Berlin on Thursday after meeting his German counterpart.

Aside from Italy and France, other nations seen possibly contributing troops include Belgium, Spain, Poland and Finland.

Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt met Annan early on Friday in Brussels and said Belgium would provide "an important participation" in the force. Details of the contribution were due to be announced at 2.30 pm local (1230 GMT).

Finland has proposed that it and other Nordic countries offer a joint battalion of up to 800 soldiers.

ROBUST DEFENCE

U.N. officials see a strong European contingent as vital to the balance of an expanded multinational peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, which is set to have up to 15,000 troops and work alongside Lebanese soldiers in the south of the country.

They say the force is urgently needed to preserve the truce between Israel and the Hizbollah guerrilla group, which came into effect on Aug. 14 after a month of fighting which killed more than 1,300 people, mostly Lebanese civilians.

President Jacques Chirac, who disappointed allies by initially offering only to double an existing French contingent to 400, said France would increase its deployment after winning assurances they would be able to defend themselves robustly.

"We have received the necessary clarifications from the United Nations," Chirac said in a televised address, of the command structure and rules of engagement of an operation which could get caught in the crossfire of any resumed hostilities.

The United Nations is planning to create a mini-command centre made up of leading troop contributors to the force, hoping to allay French fears that they would lack sufficient control over their soldiers.

Italy has offered to lead the operation, but Chirac said France could also take on that role.

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said on Thursday that Annan was due to announce "the details of the command of the operation" in Brussels. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the current UNIFIL troop commander, General Alain Pellegrini of France, was expected to remain in office. (Additional reporting by Stephen Brown in Rome, Elizabeth Pineau in Paris, Louis Charbonneau in Berlin, Evelyn Leopold at the United Nations, David Clarke in London)

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