Berlin state Interior Minister Ehrhart Koerting called on Chancellor Angela Merkel's government to allow at least part of the training of Afghan police to be carried out in Germany.

"Similar demands have been voiced before, but the government has never responded to them despite the security situation getting worse for our trainers in Afghanistan," Social Democrat Koerting wrote in a letter to Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, quoted by the Financial Times Deutschland newspaper on Thursday.

Koerting addressed Maziere in his capacity as the spokesman for Germany's Social Democratic interior ministers, from whom he received backing.

German police divided

A spokesperson for the Federal Interior Ministry said the proposal was being examined.

But the interior minister of Lower Saxony, Christian Democrat Uwe Schuenemann has laready said that police training operations in Afghanistan should be enhanced rather than wound down.

Police trade union DPoIG also spoke out against Koerting's call. "Police training can only be undertaken within [the context of the target] culture," said the group's president, Rainer Wendt.

The GdP police union, however, moved to back Koerting's proposal. The group's head, Konrad Freiberg, commented that senior Afghan police officials could also benefit from training in facilities in Germany.

Trainers said to be at risk

Koerting pointed out in the letter that the mandate for Germany's Afghanistan mission did not include provisions to ensure trainers' safety in view of their increased involvement in NATO's Focused District Development (FDD) strategy. FDD requires troops, police and trainers to fan out to villages and communities and seek more contact with locals than in the past.

The new strategy already explicitly ruled out holding training courses in remote areas or secluded camps, former German military chief of staff Harald Kujat told public broadcaster ZDF.

"I consider this to be very important," Kujat said. "The increased activities on the ground and contact with the locals will help us regain some of the trust that we've lost in the past few years."

Koerting said police trainers could not be expected to do their job only at times when they were flanked by military police and troops to protect them from attacks. He argued that military and policing tasks should be kept separate and that this could best be achieved if police were trained in Germany.

Germany has agreed to contribute 200 police trainers to an additional 2,000 officers the US administration said were needed.

dfm/hg/dpa/Reuters/AFP
Editor: Nancy Isenson