The ministry reports that he will visit Kunduz and Faizabad, in the Afghan north, where German peacekeeping contingents are stationed to help rehabilitate the host country. The minister is also to appear at a German air base in Termez on the Uzbek-Afghan frontier. Stationed there are German S 160 Transal cargo planes and SN 53 cargo helicopters.
The Bundeswehr contingent's Afghan sojourn will be prolonged for another twelve months, the federal government determined Wednesday.
The present term is expiring, October 13, as the Bundestag had determined. The latest government resolution is also to come through parliament, Germany's Federal Press and Information Service said to Novosti.
Kunduz and Faizabad are remaining central German bases. The total German personnel on the ISAF, international Afghan security assistance forces, is to stay at a ceiling 2,250. 450 soldiers of these may be stationed in the Kunduz province.
Combat against drug trafficking is outside the German contingent's duties, stresses the federal government. The soldiers are assisting Afghanistan with economic and social rehabilitation only.
The total present-day ISAF strength exceeds 7,000. As the latest NATO summit determined in Istanbul, the personnel will be built up to 10,000 toward the year's end-an essential move, considering an Afghan presidential poll of October 9, and next spring's parliamentary election.
NATO shifted ISAF command to the Eurocorps, early August. That will be its first mission outside Europe. France's General Jean-Louis Py, in command of the Eurocorps, is now leading the ISAF.
The Eurocorps, European rapid retaliation forces, were established on a Franco-German initiative, 1992, for peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance.
