BERLIN, Aug 27: Germany said on Wednesday that it wanted to expand its military presence in Afghanistan and was pushing the United Nations to broaden the mandate of international peacekeepers already in the country.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said his government hoped to deploy about 250 troops to the northern Afghan town of Kunduz, taking them outside the capital Kabul for the first time.

But he said it would depend on the UN Security Council widening the mandate of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which operates only in and around Kabul at present.

The announcement may help Berlin build bridges with Washington after their acrimonious dispute over the US-led war on Iraq.

At the same time, Schroeder’s insistence on a UN umbrella reflects domestic concerns, as members of his centre-left government have been vowing opposition to anything smacking of US primacy.

A UN mandate would avoid the sight of German troops under US command.

Schroeder said expanding ISAF’s deployment to include Kunduz, 250 kilometres north of Kabul, was “sensible, necessary and responsible” in order to shore up the fragile central government in Kabul.

The chancellor said Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who spoke on Tuesday to UN chief Kofi Annan, would be urging the UN Security Council to press through the necessary vote.

Speaking at a news conference here, Schroeder said a fact-finding team just back from Kunduz concluded deployment would be “sensible and justifiable.”

“We believe that our contribution will enable the civilian side to be more successful that it can be at present,” he added.

He said he hoped for parliament’s rapid approval. “We can’t afford to wait ... we hope we can do it quickly.”

Germany has repeatedly insisted that, despite its strong opposition to the US-led war on Iraq, it remains firmly committed to the wider “war on terrorism”, known as Operation Enduring Freedom, and to peacekeeping missions.

Its role in Afghanistan was praised by US President George W. Bush earlier this month, in what officials here saw as a signal that the bilateral ice age brought on by the dispute over Iraq may be coming to an end.

Schroeder’s announcement followed a meeting of his government’s high-level security cabinet, which gathers senior ministers and officials.

The full cabinet will draft a proposal in the next week to put before parliament pending approval of an expanded UN mandate.

Schroeder said Berlin was talking to other NATO and EU countries which had also expressed an interest in taking part.

The troops would support and protect provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) tasked with rebuilding infrastructure such as roads, schools and hospitals and training the police and army.

The aim is to boost security and reconstruction in the provinces to extend and strengthen the authority of the central government.

Afghanistan is undergoing arguably its most critical time since the fall of the hardline Taliban militia in December 2001.

Elections are scheduled for next year, with the West keen to see President Hamid Karzai’s moderate government fare well, but much of the country remains unstable and in the hands of local warlords.

Southeast Afghanistan, in particular, has been hard-hit by an insurgency by apparently resurgent Taliban fighters.

Northern Afghanistan in contrast is more noted for lawlessness and feuding between rival factions.

Germany currently has 1,800 soldiers serving in ISAF in Afghanistan and 200 more, also under the ISAF umbrella, in Uzbekistan.

There are also up to 100 German special forces troops in Afghanistan under Operation Enduring Freedom.—AFP