Thursday, November 26, 2009

NYT: German General Quits Over Airstrike


November 27, 2009

By NICHOLAS KULISH

BERLIN — The chief of staff of the German armed forces resigned Thursday over accusations that the military withheld information on a deadly airstrike in Afghanistan in September that killed civilians as well as insurgents.

Germany’s defense minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, told Parliament that the chief of staff, Gen. Wolfgang Schneiderhan, as well as a senior official in the Defense Ministry, State Secretary Peter Wichert, had tendered their resignations after a German news report that information on civilian casualties had been withheld from the public and from prosecutors.

Their departures set off political tremors in Berlin and within the German military, with the opposition Social Democrats calling for a parliamentary inquiry. Other opposition groups demanded the resignation of Franz Josef Jung, the labor minister in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government, who was the defense minister at the time of the attacks.

On Sept. 4, Col. Georg Klein, then the commander of the German base in the Kunduz region, called in an airstrike against two tanker trucks hijacked byTaliban insurgents. In the aftermath of the attack, Mr. Jung repeatedly claimed that only insurgents had been killed in the attack.

But, citing a classified internal report, the daily newspaper Bild said Thursday that officials in the Defense Ministry were aware almost from the start of the likelihood of civilian casualties. Within hours of the airstrike, the report said, German military personnel in Afghanistan gave “clear indications” to the Defense Ministry about civilian casualties, based on reports from a hospital in Kunduz where wounded civilians were being treated. Nor could Colonel Klein have ruled out the possibility of civilian casualties when he ordered the strike, the report further stated.

Bild also posted on its Web site aerial video of the attack showing people, in the form of tiny black dots, swarming around the tankers before the explosion. Dozens of civilians are believed to have died in the attack, which killed as many as 142 people.

General Schneiderhan and Mr. Wichert had “assumed responsibility,” Mr. Guttenberg said, for what he called a breakdown in communications. But it was not clear what role, if any, they had played in the military’s withholding of information.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a Social Democrat who until last month was Germany’s foreign minister, told reporters in Berlin that while General Schneiderhan had taken military responsibility, “the question here is the political responsibility.”

The Green Party’s parliamentary leader, Jürgen Trittin, said that if Mr. Jung had lied in the days after the bombing, “He would not be fit for office, regardless of which function.”

On Thursday evening, Mr. Jung defended his actions before Parliament, saying that he “informed both the public and the Parliament properly according to the best of my knowledge.” Mr. Jung said that he learned of the report in early October from General Schneiderhan, and that he authorized it to be forwarded toNATO for its investigation of the airstrike, apparently without reading it first. “I did not receive concrete information on the report,” Mr. Jung said.

Mr. Guttenberg, who took over as defense minister last month after elections in September, said he learned of the report only after Bild called him on Wednesday for comment.

At a news conference in Berlin on Thursday with the secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Mrs. Merkel responded to the uproar over the handling of the airstrike, saying, “If we want trust we must also have full transparency.” She added that Mr. Guttenberg “has my full support if he clears up what perhaps still needs to be cleared up, and also bears and enforces the necessary consequences.”

This is a difficult time for the government, with the visit of Mr. Rasmussen and with Parliament debating the extension of the official mandate for German troops to fight in Afghanistan taking place against a backdrop of the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and questions about the effectiveness of the alliance.

The United States is trying to persuade its NATO allies to send 10,000 additional troops to Afghanistan as part of President Obama’s strategy for the region, despite the growing unpopularity in Europe of the eight-year-old war. Germany has roughly 4,300 soldiers there, the third largest in the NATO force after the United States with 68,000 military personnel in the country, and Britain with 9,000.

At the news conference with Mrs. Merkel on Thursday, Mr. Rasmussen urged European alliance members to support the expected plan to increase troop levels. “It is of the utmost importance that an American announcement of an increased troop number in Afghanistan is followed by additional troop contributions from other allies,” Mr. Rasmussen said.

Last week, the German government approved a one-year extension of the country’s deployment in Afghanistan without increasing the number of soldiers there. The cabinet decision must be confirmed by Parliament in December, when the current mandate expires.


ebaadenews.blogspot.com

No comments:

Post a Comment