Karzai Fails to Enlist Germany

In a rare setback during his global travels to drum up support for his shattered homeland, interim Afghan Prime Minister Hamid Karzai failed Thursday to persuade German officials to take charge of international peacekeepers in Kabul next month when Britain’s command expires.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping vowed that Germany will play a major role in rebuilding Afghanistan but said that Bundeswehr troops risk being “overextended” if they expand their role in the Central Asian country.

“I made it clear that we are skeptical about any physical expansion of the mandate,” Schroeder told journalists after his talks here with Karzai, who is on a three-day visit to press for aid and investment.

But Schroeder left the door open to extending the stay of German peacekeepers, who are among 4,500 troops from 19 countries in and near the still-volatile Afghan capital.

The U.N.-authorized International Security Assistance Force for Afghanistan is funded and staffed only through June. But most nations participating in the huge stabilization and reconstruction effort acknowledge that a major international presence will be needed much longer to ensure that the next phase of pacifying the country stays on track.

A convention of Afghan tribal elders known as a loya jirga is to take place in mid-June to elect a new government and provisional legislature to serve 18 months and prepare for elections. Karzai, clad in his now-trademark silk cloak draped over a Western blazer, said Berlin has offered to finance the loya jirga to ensure that the second stage of a peace process begun in Bonn in November comes to fruition.

The peacekeeping force has proved a major confidence-building factor for Kabul residents, so much so that Karzai said he hears pleas from elsewhere in the country for a similar deployment to guard against any resurgence of fighting.

“This is a petition from the Afghan people. In asking for more international peacekeepers here, for more ISAF, I am only repeating the demands of the Afghan people,” Karzai said.

Speaking at a brief welcoming meeting with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, Karzai told journalists that he had come to Berlin to make the case for Bundeswehr command of a force that includes 1,200 German troops.

“We were not able to persuade Germany of this,” Karzai said after his talks with Schroeder, and he repeated his disappointment after meeting with Scharping.

The German defense minister repeated Schroeder’s explanation that with 10,000 German troops deployed from the Balkans to East Timor, his forces would run the risk of failing in their other missions if Berlin were to expand its commitment in Afghanistan.

Germany has agreed, however, to take over the “tactical command” of troops in Kabul, organizing day-to-day functions such as patrolling, but overall command is expected to be assumed by Turkey, making it responsible for the more demanding tasks of arranging communications, negotiations, security for officials and international coordination.

Schroeder and his Cabinet also promised Karzai 320 million euros, about $280 million, in reconstruction and development aid for the war-ravaged country during the next three years.

Karzai meets today with German industrialists to discuss details of the Berlin government’s pledge to share its telecommunications and construction expertise with Afghans as they set out to rescue a country left in ruins after more than a generation of unrelenting bombing and bloodshed.