Four in five Germans oppose Afghanistan troop hike: poll

BERLIN: Nearly 80 percent of Germans oppose Berlin’s plans to hike the number of troops in Afghanistan, according to a poll released Wednesday on the eve of a major international conference. Four out of five Germans said they disagreed with a stronger military role for Berlin in Afghanistan, the survey by the independent polling institute Forsa indicated. Even among supporters of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Union, 77 percent said they objected to adding soldiers to the 4,300-strong force now in the war-ravaged country. Among members of the junior partner in the ruling centre-right coalition, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), the rate was even higher, at 86 percent. The survey revealed very shallow support for the Afghan mission. “When asked whether they personally supported the German soldiers’ deployment, nearly half (49 percent) said no,” Forsa said. In a troubling sign for Merkel, who pledged Tuesday to send another 500 troops to Afghanistan with a reserve force of 350 soldiers and begin a withdrawal in 2011, 36 percent of conservative voters and nearly half of FDP voters said they opposed the mission. Forsa found the number of Germans calling for an immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan to be “surprisingly high” at 32 percent. Around one in four — 24 percent — called for pullout by the end of 2011, 14 percent wanted a deadline for the end of the mission in 2015 while 25 percent said German troops should remain in Afghanistan longer if still needed. In Germany, where the horrors of World War II still colour the debate on military missions, all parties in parliament with the exception of the far-left Die Linke support the eight-year-old Afghan deployment to varying degrees. The poll was conducted a week before Merkel’s announcement to boost troop levels, on January 20-21, among 1,002 German citizens with a margin of error of three points. A conference in London Thursday on mapping out the way forward in Afghanistan will bring together foreign ministers from 60 countries including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. afp

Source:dailytimes.com.pk/

Germany sending more troops to Afghanistan

Germany has announced plans to send 500 more soldiers to Afghanistan, but says it wants to start bringing its troops home in 2011.

Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that Germany planned to send 500 more soldiers, and to have 350 reservists on stand-by, as well as boost its training of Afghan security forces and increase development aid.

Shortly after her announcement, foreign minister Guido Westerwelle discussed the withdrawal plan, ahead of an international conference in London.

"In the next four years we want to create the conditions to enable our military presence to be wound down gradually... We want to begin this year, step by step, with the handover of security responsibilities," he said.

"In 2011 we want to begin reducing our own contingent, and by 2014 we want to have handed over responsibility for security to Afghanistan," said Mr Westerwelle, who will represent Germany at Thursday's talks.

He noted, however, that the plans did not include setting a fixed date for the complete withdrawal of Germany's troops in the country, currently numbering 4,300 and based mostly in the north.

German troops currently form the third-largest contingent in the 110,000-strong international force behind the United States and Britain, with the upper limit capped by parliament at 4,500 soldiers.

Source:abc.net.au/

Military police dismiss allegations of abuse by Canadian troops in Afghanistan

OTTAWA — Military police have dismissed three more claims alleging abuse of detainees by Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.
In a year-end report released today, the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service says three allegations of detainee abuse filed in 2009 were unfounded.
The report says investigators determined that soldiers acted appropriately toward the detainees.
The investigation is completely separate from the recent political furor over the abuse of detainees by Afghan authorities and why Canada continued to hand over detainees in 2006-07 despite reports of torture.
Since 2006, the military police have looked into a dozen claims of abuse by Canadian soldiers and found all but one were unfounded.
A single allegation, filed last year, is still being investigated.
Source:http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jpSphhIDuRKy1OhSBRm2VYw7X2qg

German Opposition to Afghan Fight Grows as NATO Calls for More

Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- More than two-thirds of German voters want the country’s military to pull out of Afghanistan as soon as possible, adding pressure to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government as it fields NATO calls to send additional troops.

Sixty-nine percent of 1,000 voters polled want a quick withdrawal, up 12 percentage points from September, according to an Infratest dimap poll for ARD television released today. Support for Germany’s mission dropped 10 points to 27 percent.

The poll was taken three days after the resignation from Merkel’s Cabinet of Franz Josef Jung, part of the fallout from a Sept. 4 air strike in northern Afghanistan that killed as many as 142 people. A leaked report published in Bild newspaper suggested that information about civilian casualties had been withheld, belying Jung’s initial claims when defense minister that the German-ordered attack had killed only militants.

The bombing in Kunduz province has overshadowed the debate in Germany about whether to increase its contribution to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission in response to President Barack Obama’s decision to send 30,000 additional combat troops.

Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Jung’s successor in Merkel’s five-week-old government, told lawmakers yesterday that the commander who ordered the strike had erred, reversing his earlier position in light of the report. While he stood by the commander, Colonel Georg Klein, for protecting his soldiers, the order was “militarily inappropriate.”

No Confidence

The ARD poll suggested the flap has had a negative impact on voters, with 77 percent saying they have no confidence in the government’s communications strategy on Afghanistan. Nineteen percent said the withholding of information over the air strike was an isolated incident.

Germany’s lower house of parliament yesterday extended the mandate for the Afghan mission by a year to the end of 2010, for now maintaining the maximum number of troops at 4,500. Merkel’s government has said it will take the next eight weeks before a Jan. 28 conference to decide whether to send additional troops.

Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told lawmakers that the London meeting on Afghanistan must not become a “troop deployment conference.” Westerwelle said earlier this week that Germany may step up police training in Afghanistan while welcoming Obama’s 2011 target date to begin withdrawal as a confirmation of German aims to bring the mission to a close within the next four years.

The ARD poll was taken Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 and has a margin of error as much as 3.1 percent.

Source: bloomberg.com/