NATO commander seeks AWACS planes for Afghanistan

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO's commander in Afghanistan has asked the alliance to send surveillance planes to help the battle against insurgents there, an official said on Thursday.

The request, if approved, could pose political problems for Germany, which supplies many of the personnel for the planes and which might need parliamentary approval for the deployment.

"COM-ISAF has requested it in a letter to SACEUR," a NATO official said of a request by U.S. General David McKiernan to NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe General John Craddock.

"There's been no decision yet," added the official, who requested anonymity.

A spokesman for the German Defence Ministry said on Thursday the letter had not yet been received in Berlin and there had not been any official request by NATO.

No details were available on the reasons for the request, but NATO commanders have long complained about the difficulty of carrying out proper surveillance of a country the size of France with poor or non-existent internal infrastructure.

NATO owns a fleet of 17 Boeing Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) radar aircraft based in Geilenkirchen, central Germany. According to its website, it has a second but smaller component comprising seven British-manned planes in Britain.

Equipped with radar capable of tracing air traffic over large distances and at low altitudes, the planes would be useful in coordinating the helicopters on which the 53,000-strong NATO-led mission depends for much of its mobility.

Nearly a third of the 1,600 personnel on the Geilenkirchen base are German, although the planes could theoretically be deployed with crews of other nationalities.

The German presence in Afghanistan has for months been close to the limit of 3,500 troops allowed by its parliament mandate.

That expires in October and Berlin wants to raise that threshold by an extra 1,000 troops in a new mandate. German involvement in the AWACS deployment could mean having to raise the upper limit further and define the tasks of the AWACS.

Some opposition parties are critical of the mission and polls show a majority of the population is also sceptical. Parliament last October backed the deployment of six Tornado reconnaissance jets only after a long and difficult debate.

(Reporting by Mark John and Sabine Siebold; Editing by David Brunnstrom)