German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said Friday he was rejecting a request from Kabul for 19 German Army soldiers to move to the country's embattled south with a Afghan battalion they have been training for the past few months.
Thomas Raabe, spokesman for the minister, said in Berlin the assistance was not an emergency and therefore was not covered by the current German parliamentary mandate authorizing over 3,000 troops currently stationed in Afghanistan as a part of a NATO-led international peacekeeping force (ISAF).
Germany's ground troops are only authorized to operate in Kabul and the north of Afghanistan, though the German air force flies reconnaissance missions above the fighting in the south.
