Germany not to renew special forces' Afghan mission

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany will no longer make troops from its elite KSK special forces available to support U.S.-led counterterrorism missions in Afghanistan, the Defense Ministry said on Monday.

Germany's participation in the operation against Afghanistan's Taliban, which the United States launched after the attacks of September 11, 2001, has been highly unpopular with German voters and many politicians on the political left.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whose Social Democrat (SPD) rule in an uneasy coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, had spoken out against a new parliamentary mandate for the KSK soldiers at the weekend.

"From November, we will abstain from making the up to 100 KSK soldiers available," a Defense ministry spokesman said, referring to the special forces available under the "Enduring Freedom" mission in Afghanistan.

Steinmeier, the SPD's candidate to challenge Merkel in next year's general election, noted that the KSK soldiers had not been deployed over the past three years.

A parliamentary mandate allowing the deployment of the soldiers was up for renewal next month.

The mandate is separate from Germany's peacekeeping efforts in Afghanistan, where some 3,500 German soldiers are working in the NATO-led peacekeeping mission. The German government hopes to send some 1,000 extra troops to Afghanistan under the NATO mission, and hopes to win approval for a parliamentary mandate on this later this month.

Germany has been seeking to expand its role in overseas missions in the last decade. But many Germans are uneasy about the emergence of a strong army.

(Reporting by Sabine Siebold; Writing by Kerstin Gehmlich)