BERLIN (AFP) — The German parliament signed off on an extension of Berlin's military engagement in Afghanistan amid waning public support for the mission and pointed questions about its prospects of success.
The Bundestag lower house voted with 453 deputies out of 580 to prolong the mandate for another year thanks to broad support in Chancellor Angela Merkel's left-right ruling coalition of conservatives and Social Democrats.
Many of the 79 votes against the measure came from the opposition Left Party while 48 deputies abstained, several of them from the opposition Greens.
About 3,000 Bundeswehr soldiers are deployed in the north of Afghanistan with NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in support of the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.
The new mandate sets a ceiling of 3,500 German troops. Berlin also has six Tornado reconnaissance planes deployed in the strife-wracked country.
Germany has resisted NATO pressure to send troops to the south, where US-led forces have been battling an increasingly bloody insurgency by extremist Taliban fighters.
Sixty-one percent of Germans opposed the Afghan extension of the mandate, according to a poll published in the daily Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger Friday, due to rising troop and civilian casualties and fears that Karzai's government will never come to grips with the rebels.
A German engineer, Rudolf Blechschmidt, and four Afghan hostages were freed by Taliban kidnappers Wednesday after three months in captivity in exchange for the release of five Taliban prisoners held by the Kabul government.
Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar taunted the Afghan government Friday, saying it had been forced to negotiate with his movement, as the group called the release of the five prisoners a "great victory".
Blechschmidt has been quoted in the German press accusing the Afghan police of collusion with his kidnappers. Germany has been actively involved in training Afghan security forces.
A junior foreign minister, Gernot Erler, said in an interview published Friday that Germany planned to significantly boost its spending on police training next year.
But Lothar Bisky, co-leader of the Left Party, said the German deployment had patently failed to meet its goals.
"We want to end the military occupation and move toward exclusively civilian assistance," he told parliament.
"The good cause does not justify military means in Afghanistan."
Overseas Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, a prominent leftist from the Social Democrats, said Berlin was pressing Washington to be more cautious in its operations to avoid losing the support of the Afghan people.
"There cannot be any more civilian casualties," she told Die Welt newspaper. "We are demanding this in talks with the Americans and this change of strategy is anchored in NATO."
Peter Struck, the head of the Social Democrats' parliamentary group and a former defence minister, urged Merkel to visit Afghanistan, indicating that she had failed to convince Germans "why we are there."
"Most Germans think these days, 'Get out of Afghanistan and leave us alone'," he said.
Outgoing UN Afghanistan coordinator Tom Koenigs, a German, urged German soldiers to provide security to Afghan authorities fighting the booming narcotics trade.
"I want the Bundeswehr to provide security when the Afghan security forces" clear opium poppy fields, he told Friday's Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
Another Bundestag vote is expected in November on the mandate for German participation in the US-led anti-terror operation Enduring Freedom.
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