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U.S. urges Germany to extend mandate in Afghanistan
2006-10-23
Germany should consider extending its Afghanistan mandate to allow its troops to move to the south of the country, where other NATO members' forces have faced a wave of suicide attacks, a U.S. official said on Monday. U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns told a defense conference in Berlin, organized by the Welt am Sonntag newspaper, that Germany should ask itself whether more flexibility was needed in deploying troops in Afghanistan. "We think ... that NATO needs to be more flexible in our ability to shift troops from one region of Afghanistan to another," Burns said of the organization which earlier this month assumed responsibility for security in Afghanistan. Burns said that most of the action was in the south and the east of the country where soldiers from the U.S., Britain, Canada and the Netherlands were bearing the brunt of casualties. "Wouldn't it be better if our NATO commanders had the ability to shift troops from the north or west to help where our offensive is underway in the south and east? That is currently not possible because unfortunately so many of our NATO countries have put restrictions on the use of their military forces." He said individual countries like Germany argued these were national decisions and that NATO commanders did not have the kind of operational control to move soldiers around. "I would very respectfully ask Germans ... to reflect on whether the very narrow and very rigid restrictions put on the German troops make sense for NATO." "Wouldn't it be better if Germany and France ... could be willing to have those troops sent sometimes on a periodic, temporary basis to help the Dutch, British, U.S. and Canadians that are undertaking the major share of the fighting?" Germany last month agreed to keep troops in northern Afghanistan for another 12 months as part of NATO's peace-keeping forces but has said it cannot help NATO in the south of the country which has been hit by escalating violence. The Taliban has regrouped since its ouster in 2001 by U.S. and Afghan forces in response to the September 11 attacks on the United States.
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