German defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg made an unnanounced visit to Afghanistan on Friday. He is touring Kunduz, the northern Afghan city where a German commander ordered a NATO airstrike on two hijacked fuel trucks two months ago.

The airstrike was reported to have killed over 140 people, including civilians and has led to a scandal over alleged cover-ups. A German defense ministry statement said Guttenberg wanted to visit Kunduz to get a first-hand look at the current situation in the war-torn country.

Work "highly valued"

Guttenberg told troops in Kunduz, where Germany holds regional command of the NATO led forces, that their work was “highly valued”.

He said that parliamentary hearings next week about the airstrike and how information about it was handled "should not be aimed at the discrediting of soldiers".

The minister was accompanied on the visit by members of parliament from several parties and military experts. Guttenberg stressed that German troops deserved support from their own country.

Before leaving Afghanistan, he said that “terrible suffering” had been inflicted on the families of civilians killed in the airstrike and that the payment of compensation would not take long. The defense ministry is in discussions with German-Afghan lawyer Karim Popal, who is demanding payouts from the German military for 78 Afghan families affected by the airstrike.

Under pressure from the public

Guttenberg has been faced with increasing pressure from the German public to reveal all of the known details behind the NATO airstrike. He recently stated that the attack was "militarily inappropriate", reversing an earlier statement, but opposition parties have said he should have known when he made his first assessment about the civilian casualties. The news weekly Stern reported that Guttenberg had at that stage already received a report from the International Committee of the Red Cross which mentioned 74 civilian deaths, including children.

Inge Hoeger, a member of parliament for the Left Party, called for Guttenberg's resignation over the matter. "Whoever has a document on their desk that says that eight, ten and twelve-year-old children were killed, can't carry on as if everything was alright," she said. Guttenberg says his initial statement was made based on what he knew at the time, and that he wanted to correct himself in light of more recent reports. While in Afghanistan, Guttenberg is expected to explain to troops why he reversed his earlier judgement on the appropriateness of the attack.

Allegations of a cover-up over civilian deaths have already forced Guttenberg's predecessor Franz Josef Jung to resign from German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet.

German special forces involvement questioned

German media have recently reported that Germany's special forces, the KSK, played a decisive roll in ordering the airstrike. However, the news magazine Der Spiegel has called their involvement into question, saying that only a relatively junior KSK officer was present, putting the events of the operation into writing. The other four personnel involved were not from the KSK.

The airstrike controversy comes at a critical time, with low German public support for the military's involvement, and mounting pressure from NATO allies on Germany to boost its troop numbers. The United States wants Germany and other NATO allies to contribute at least 7,000 more troops to assist with U.S. President Barack Obama's 30,000-troop surge. Germany currently has about 4,400 soldiers in Afghanistan's northern region.

"Afghanistan will not be won with military means"

Before Guttenberg left for his trip to Afghanistan, he told German broadcaster ZDF that the mission's success could not depend only on military force. He said NATO forces needed to find a "sensible way" to pull out of Afghanistan, and declined to comment on whether or not Germany would boost its troop levels. The government insists it will only make a decision after an international Afghanistan conference in January. Guttenberg maintained that military presence was still necessary to protect civilian helpers and to train Afghan security forces.

mk/AFP/dpa/Reuters
Editor: Michael Lawton