July 10, 2003	Thursday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 9,1424

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BAGRAM AIR BASE, July 9: US and Italian troops have concluded a four-day operation against Taliban remnants and Al Qaeda fighters in southeast Afghanistan, a US military spokesman said on Wednesday.

The purpose of the July 2-6 operation was “to prevent the re-emergence of terrorism and deny anti-coalition fighters sanctuary,” US Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Lefforge told reporters at Bagram Air Base 50 kilometers north of Kabul.

Some 800 US soldiers backed by more than 500 Italian paratroops started the operation dubbed Operation Haven Denial last week in eastern Paktika and Khost provinces.

Col Lefforge said the coalition forces dismantled one illegal border checkpoint and confiscated a small cache of weapons.

The operation, backed by 25 aircraft, was the biggest since the massive US-led Operation Anaconda offensive against Taliban and Al Qaeda holdouts in the mountains of Paktia province in March 2002.

“Our business is to continue to go there as a show of force to display that we are here ... and as a show of force I think it was successful,” Lefforge said.

He said some 250 vehicles were inspected and 400 people interviewed, but no one was detained during the operation.

Some 19 months after the fall of the Taliban, foreign and pro-government forces still come under regular attack from remnants of the hardline militia and their allies from Al Qaeda network.

“We had some rocket attacks and anti-coalition activities around the border region of the Orgon and Shkin area north of Paktika province and also in Khost area,” Lefforge said, without giving any dates.

BERLIN: Germany plans to extend its troops’ mandate in Afghanistan until at least the end of 2004, Defence Minister Peter Struck said in a newspaper interview published on Wednesday.

Struck told the Berliner Zeitung that German troops would only pull out of the war-ravaged country when the United Nations ends the mission.

“That means that the Bundestag (lower house of parliament) mandate that runs out in December will be extended by at least one year,” Mr Struck said. German soldiers make up almost half of the 4,600-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) keeping the peace in and around Kabul.

ISAF is currently under joint German and Dutch command but its mandate does not stretch outside the capital.

The Afghan government has been struggling to impose its authority outside Kabul since the US-led war to topple the Taliban regime ended in late 2001, and attacks on peacekeepers have been increasing.

Although he acknowledged that the security situation on the ground was “neither calm nor stable,” Mr Struck said it was “unrealistic” to expect ISAF participant nations to significantly boost their troop numbers.

“You won’t find a country prepared to greatly beef up its contingent,” he said.

On whether to extend ISAF’s mandate beyond Kabul, Struck said there were two options on the table: “Sending provincial reconstruction teams into the countryside or gradually expanding the ISAF’s area of responsibility beyond Kabul.

“Personally, I think that the idea of the reconstruction teams is more realistic. Soldiers are not the most important thing for the countryside but rather civilian reconstruction teams to train police, work with engineers and help with developing administration,” he said.—AFP