Berlin scrambles to quash talk of Afghan pullout

BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel's government scrambled Thursday to quash a public debate about pulling German troops out of Afghanistan that has grown louder amid a surge in violence tied to a presidential election there.

Polls show a solid majority of Germans would like the 4,200 German troops operating in Afghanistan as part of a six-year-old NATO mission to return home.

But the issue has not played a big role in Germany's own election campaign because the partners in Merkel's coalition -- her Christian Democrats (CDU) and the rival Social Democrats (SPD) -- both back the unpopular mission and are keen not to lose votes to smaller parties because of it.

They agreed last October to extend a parliamentary mandate for participation in the NATO mission by 14 months instead of the usual 12 in the hope of preventing debate over the deployment from coloring the election race.

That strategy has backfired because Taliban insurgents stepped up attacks in the past week in a bid to disrupt the Afghan election taking place Thursday.

The violence has prompted prominent political voices in Germany, including a former defense minister from Merkel's party, to press the government for a plan to pull out German troops -- calls the chancellor and leading ministers dismissed.

"It is not helpful in a situation that is very difficult for German soldiers to question the purpose of the mission," Merkel told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.

She said Berlin was committed to helping Afghans get to the point where they could defend themselves and described the mission as crucial to German security, pointing to militants on trial in Duesseldorf who have admitted to plotting attacks here after visiting training camps in the Afghan border region.

Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung told ARD television on Thursday that he expected German troops to stay in Afghanistan for another five to 10 years and dismissed calls for troop cuts once the Afghan election is over.

"We will stay at this high level," he said.

Debate about a pullout flared after Volker Ruehe, defense minister under former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, called the Afghan mission a "disaster" at the weekend and pressed Berlin to act.

"We should commit with all our strength over the next two years and then start the pullout," he told Der Spiegel weekly.

Wednesday a member of the center-right Free Democrats (FDP), who could form a coalition with Merkel's conservatives after next month's election, said a new German government must draw up a plan to get the troops out.

"The next government must formulate a precise plan that spells out how a pullout of the German army over the coming years would look," Juergen Koppelin, an FDP member with responsibility for defense issues, told the Bild newspaper.