German army deaths spark concern over military role

BERLIN, May 20 (Reuters) - The killing of three German soldiers in Afghanistan yesterday has raised fears that political and popular support for Germany's international peacekeeping commitments may be increasingly under threat.

As German television broadcast images of the aftermath of the bloody suicide attack in the northern city of Kunduz, politicians from the ruling coalition said the incident could make it harder to win support for future missions there.

Germany's lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, is due to vote in October on whether to extend the mandate.

Newspaper editorials stressed the need for Germany to uphold its NATO peacekeeping pledges but warned that the killings, which were claimed by Islamist Taliban insurgents, could stir public concern about the risk of militant attacks at home.

The Kunduz blast, described by Chancellor Angela Merkel as a ''treacherous murder'', was the deadliest attack on Germany's soldiers in Afghanistan since June 2003, and brought the number of German military deaths in the country to 21 since 2002.

Rolf Muetzenich, a foreign policy expert in the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), who share power with Merkel's conservatives, said it would now be harder to find parliamentary consensus on whether to prolong Germany's stay in Afghanistan.

REBUILDING ''The discussion about this was tough enough already in the SPD,'' he told newspaper der Tagesspiegel am Sonntag. ''A terrible attack like this will obviously have an influence when it comes to deciding on whether to extend the mandate.'' Four soldiers injured in the attack were due to arrive back in Germany today, the army said.

Some 62 years after the end of World War Two, many Germans are still uncertain whether the country should play an active military role abroad, and left-wing politicians wasted no time in renewing calls for soldiers to leave Afghanistan.

Oskar Lafontaine, a former SPD chairman who now fronts the far-left Left Party, told the Bild am Sonntag paper Germany should remove its troops from Afghanistan and instead focus on providing development aid to help rebuild the country.

The SPD has lost voter share to the Left Party in recent elections and Merkel herself has urged her coalition partners not to veer left in a bid to see off the challenge.

Niels Annen, a member of the SPD's left wing, told der Tagesspiegel am Sonntag the latest attack made it vital to hold a ''fundamental debate'' about Germany's role in Afghanistan.

Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung and army generals said their resolve to meet Germany's peacekeeping obligations in Afghanistan would not be shaken by the attack, sentiments which were applauded in the conservative newspaper Welt am Sonntag.

''A 'no' to extending the mandate would send out the wrong signal to terrorists worldwide, to Germany's allies in NATO and the international community,'' it said in an editorial piece.

However, the paper asked: ''Is it not the case that the Afghanistan deployment increases the risk of a terror attack in Germany?'' REUTERS ABM VC1828