April 24, 2008	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 17, 1429

BERLIN: Germany was trying to limit the fallout with Nato allies on Wednesday after comments from a top military official describing the war in Afghanistan as being like ‘trying to mount a dead horse.’ “You can imagine that such a remark has not been well received by our allies who are engaged in southern Afghanistan,” particularly those who had had troops killed, a defence ministry spokesman told a news conference.

“I don’t think that is the way to deal with such an issue,” he said.

On Tuesday Bernhard Gertz, head of the German army’s trade union, was quoted as making the comment while saying that simply sending more troops to southern Afghanistan would be futile in trying to put an end to the Taliban insurgency there.

Germany has around 3,200 troops in the relatively peaceful north of Afghanistan and has refused to send them to help out US, Canadian and British allies in the Nato military alliance in the more volatile south of the country.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government maintains that sending German troops to the south would jeopardise their reconstruction work in the north.

The German army’s chief of staff, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, was also quoted as saying earlier this month that he was worried about an increase in violence in the north in the wake of a string of attacks on German troops and their Afghan helpers.

Sending German troops into combat would also be highly sensitive politically, 63 years after the end of World War II.—AFP