GERMANY:Germany yesterday rejected a call from the United States to send combat soldiers to dangerous parts of southern Afghanistan and said there were no plans to change its deployment in the less violent north.
Following a strongly worded letter from US defence secretary Robert Gates, German defence minister Franz Josef Jung said he did not envisage a change to the mandate allowing Germany to send 3,500 troops to northern Afghanistan. "We have agreed on a clear division of labour," Mr Jung told reporters yesterday. "I think that we really must keep our focus on the north."
German chancellor Angela Merkel had also made clear that Germany's parliamentary mandate was "not up for discussion", government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm told a news conference. Mr Jung said he would write to Mr Gates to explain the German position.
Nato secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Mr Gates's letter, which asked Germany and other Nato members to boost the 40,000-strong Nato International Security Assistance Force by another 3,200 troops, was "not helpful". He told reporters in Paris after meeting French president Nicolas Sarkozy it was unfair to say Germany was doing too little and he would prefer if any discussion on boosting troop numbers was not done in public. "Force generation is important. We have to do more. But it is not helpful," he said, referring to the Gates letter. "It obscures the success that we are having in Afghanistan in reconstruction and development. We have to do more, no doubt about that, but I think it's not very helpful to do that publicly," he added. German politicians are wary of making a greater commitment as opinion polls show public scepticism about the mission.