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BRUSSELS - European Union foreign ministers threw their weight behind a UN plan for a truce in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Monday, saying it offered a glimmer of hope for a political solution to the three-and-a-half year old civil war.

The EU also said it was ready to work with Iran and Russia to try to drive forward a broader political process that could lead to a settlement of a war that has killed around 200,000 people.

UN peace envoy Staffan de Mistura briefed the ministers on Sunday evening on his plan for a "freeze in the fighting" in Aleppo to try to get humanitarian assistance into the city that is split between opposition fighters and government troops.

"The EU is committed to fully support...de Mistura's efforts to achieve a strategic de-escalation of violence as a basis for a broader sustainable political process," EU foreign ministers said in a statement after discussing the plan in Brussels on Monday.

The EU could support de Mistura's efforts for example by helping to rebuild local administration and restoring basic services in areas where fighting had calmed down, they said.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said ministers had also agreed to "work with all the actors ... that can be part of the solution to the Syrian crisis, namely big Gulf countries, starting from Saudi Arabia, but also Iran and Russia."

De Mistura sees his proposed truce in Aleppo as a stepping stone in a political process that has been blocked for years.

The Syrian opposition, as well as some diplomats and analysts, say the initiative is risky and that Aleppo could face the same fate as the city of Homs, where government forces have largely regained control.

Separately, the European Commission and Italy agreed on Monday to launch a regional fund for Syria, with an initial 23 million euros (S$37.5 million), designed to mobilise more aid for the Syrian refugee crisis.

Mogherini also announced she would visit Baghdad and Arbil, the capital of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region, next week for talks with officials. Iraq, with the support of a US-led coalition, is battling Islamic State insurgents that have seized territory in Iraq and Syria.

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European Union backs UN plan for Syrian truce

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"Time and again, I am running into people from USAID, State and the Pentagon who think they are in Kansas [not Afghanistan]," he said. "My auditors tell me things [about spending plans] and I say, 'you have to be making this up, this is Alice in Wonderland'."

The Nato military operation in Afghanistan, which started shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and which has been spearheaded by the US, will come to a melancholy close at the end of December with the Taliban insurgency still strong, although it does not hold any major cities.

Under current plans, about 10,000 US troops will remain in the country until 2016, although the administration is under growing pressure to extend their presence because of worries about a Taliban resurgence once the US departs.

Since 2001, the government has appropriated $765bn for the war in Afghanistan, the vast bulk for the defence department but also including some spending at the state department.

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The money to finance both the Iraq and Afghan wars was borrowed and, according to Ryan Edwards at City University of New York, the US has already paid interest of $260bn on that war debt. Under FT calculations based on funds appropriated, $125bn of those interest costs have been allocated to the Afghan conflict.

On top of that there are medical costs already incurred for soldiers who have left the military. Linda Bilmes, a Harvard economist who has done extensive research on the war costs, estimates that medical spending on veterans from both Iraq and Afghanistan has so far reached $134bn.

However, she said it was impossible to assess how much of that spending was related only to Afghanistan because a third of soldiers served in both conflicts and because medical issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder were usually the cumulative result of a series of events rather than one incident.

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The Afghan conflict has led to other increases in public spending that are significant but difficult to isolate. As well as the separate war funding it has received since 2001, the Pentagon's "base" budget, which covers all its other costs, has also seen a dramatic increase, with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq one of the main factors.

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Afghan war costs US $1 trillion