| | Germany rejects troop request for southern Afghanistan AFP
02/01/2008
By Deborah Cole
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BERLIN - Germany on Friday rejected an urgent US call for combat troops in battle-ravaged southern Afghanistan, insisting Berlin's focus on reconstruction efforts in the relatively calm north was justified.
Amid reports of transatlantic tensions over the NATO mission in Afghanistan, German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung said the mandate in place until October ruled out stationing soldiers in the turbulent south.
"I think we will continue to do our part as foreseen by the parliamentary mandate," Jung told reporters at a hastily organised news conference.
"That will have to continue to be our focus."
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates reportedly sent an "unusually stern" letter to Jung last month demanding combat troops, helicopters and paratroopers for Afghanistan and charging that some NATO states were not pulling their weight.
Jung responded with a similarly "direct and stern" letter, the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported Friday without quoting from the letters.
The minister confirmed that Germany, as well as several other NATO member states, had received a letter from Gates asking for help in the bloody struggle against insurgents in southern Afghanistan but declined to comment further on its content.
Government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said Berlin found Gates's letter "surprising".
"During all the meetings and talks we have had with the US side in recent months, the engagement of the German military in the framework of the mandate with its focus on northern Afghanistan was expressly praised," he told reporters.
"It was recognised that the German military is doing important, useful work there and we have always made clear that the mandate in its current form as foreseen by the parliament is the basis of our engagement in Afghanistan and that the content of this mandate is not subject to debate."
He said Jung would be discussing the issue with his NATO counterparts at a meeting in Vilnius next week.
Germany currently has about 3,100 troops stationed in Afghanistan, nearly all of them deployed in the capital Kabul and the north as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
It is the third biggest troop provider after the United States and Britain.
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier noted that Germany had already stepped up its military and reconstruction efforts in the north and said its troops were making headway in stabilising the region.
"I think that is also recognised by the United States," he said after talks in Berlin with his Swedish counterpart Carl Bildt.
Gates' letter came after NATO formally asked Germany last month to deploy a rapid reaction force of 250 troops in northern Afghanistan to replace a Norwegian contingent.
Berlin is expected to approve the request but public support for the six-year-old mission is slipping with a majority of Germans saying they oppose continued deployment.
There are about 40,000 NATO and 20,000 US-led coalition soldiers in Afghanistan. NATO commanders say they need about 7,500 more troops to carry out their mission.
Southern Afghanistan has seen the worst violence since the Taliban was ousted in the US-led invasion in 2001, after the September 11 terror attacks by Al-Qaeda.
The US State Department's point man for Afghanistan, Richard Boucher, expressed concern Thursday that the international community could abandon Afghanistan, cautioning that success in the insurgency-wracked nation was "not assured."
And Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper again warned, during talks with British counterpart Gordon Brown, that Ottawa would pull its 2,500 soldiers out of Afghanistan if it did not get reinforcements from other countries.
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