Germany sets limits on Afghan role

Germany: training, not troops

Germany has agreed to lead the reconstruction of Afghanistan's police force after talks with the Afghan interim leader, Hamid Karzai.

The two governments signed the agreement in Berlin, on the last day of Mr Karzai's visit.

Germany has recent experience of training civilian police forces in Bosnia and Kosovo and was involved in training Afghan police before the Soviet invasion in 1979.

German police aid

New police academy

New standard training programme

Police instructors

Fifteen new police stations in Kabul

Germany trained police in Afghanistan in the 1960s and 1970s

But Friday's agreement appears to have been the only concrete result of the Afghan leader's visit, with Germany reluctant to take on a greater security role in his country.

"Together, we want to build a culture of legality in Afghanistan," said the German Interior Minister, Otto Schily, after committing about $70 million in police aid.

Germany has already started shipping police vans to Kabul. The German appointed to head the rebuilding effort from Kabul was due to leave for Afghanistan on Friday together with four other officials.

The programme is aimed at retraining about 30,000 ex-fighters as police officers.

Mr Schily stressed that the aim was to "put in place a well-trained Afghan police", not "setting up an international police force".

The BBC's Berlin correspondent, Rob Broomby, reports that Mr Karzai obtained little more than warm words in Germany.

We would not consider it possible to move beyond Kabul, although we are not proposing a reduction of our troop presence

Gerhard Schroeder
German chancellor

He failed to convince Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder that Germany should take over the leadership of the International Stabilisation Force (ISAF) or that the peacekeepers' mandate should be extended beyond Kabul.

Germany already has 850 troops stationed in Kabul as part of the 4,500-strong ISAF.

"We would not consider it possible to move beyond Kabul, although we are not proposing a reduction of our troop presence," said Mr Schroeder.

The German Defence Minister, Rudolf Scharping, added that no new German soldiers would be sent either.