Jets for Afghanistan
January 12, 2007
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Friday denied earlier remarks by a top German official that Germany had already decided to send Tornado spy jets to Afghanistan.
"We shall study this request and take a decision in good time," Steinmeier told reporters in Brussels, adding that he would discuss a NATO request made in December for reconnaissance planes at an alliance meeting on Jan. 26.
Top official says deployment done deal
Earlier, Germany's former defense minister, the Social Democrats' parliamentary group leader Peter Struck, told reporters in Brussels that Germany would deploy the six aircraft requested by NATO.
Struck said the fighter-bombers would be based in the capital Kabul but used in the south of the country, a bastion of Taliban insurgents who surprised NATO last year with fiercer than expected resistance.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said he would welcome such a move.
"If the German government would announce, or has announced, the deployment of Tornado aircraft in a reconnaissance role to Afghanistan, I would highly welcome such a decision," he told reporters.
Struck said it might be possible to send the fighter-bombers for two or three months but that a deployment of seven months, for example, "would surely not be covered by the current mandate."
Politicians want Parliament to approve
Struck's comments, however, have sparked anger among some members of Germany's ruling coalition of Christian Democrats (CDU) and Social Democrats (SPD) as well as in the opposition.
Some have raised doubts about whether the sending of military aircraft is possible without an additional parliamentary mandate than the one that presently covers the deployment of some 3,000 German peacekeepers in the calmer north of the country.
Volker Kauder, CDU parliamentary chief, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper the issue could only be solved once the government bared all the facts.
"One thing is clear: there's no sneaking past the parliament," Kauder said.
But Germany's opposition reacted with anger to news of a possible imminent deployment of the reconnaissance planes.
Hans-Christian Ströbele, deputy head of the Green party said he would consider lodging a complaint with Germany's Federal Constitutional Court if the government went ahead with the deployment without parliamentary approval.
Germany under pressure
At the same time, if Germany were to go ahead with the deployment of the reconnaissance planes, it could deflect criticism that the country has ignored calls to help provide reinforcements to fight Taliban-led insurgents in the south and preferred to keep its troops in the relatively calm north.
NATO leaders agreed in November to move troops around inside Afghanistan in emergency cases, as commanders demanded more flexibility to fight the insurgents.
The insurgency claimed the lives of around 3,700 people last year -- four times more than in 2005, according to official figures. Around 120 foreign soldiers were killed.
Britain, Canada and the Netherlands led the NATO push south in mid-2006 and have borne the brunt of causalities in the fight between the 32,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the Taliban.