Germany may increase Afghan force

BERLIN, June 21 (UPI) -- The German defense minister plans to send 1,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan, a spokesman said Saturday.

The country now has 3,500 soldiers with the NATO force there, the International Security Assistance Force. The spokesman said that the minister, Franz Josef Jung, would like to cap the Afghanistan force at 4,500, Deutsche Welle reported.

"We want to increase training three-fold," the spokesman said in an interview on public radio. "Next year we want to train 7,500 Afghan troops. To achieve this we need to formulate a new upper limit for our mandate which will give German troops greater flexibility."

Germany is scheduled to take over from Norway in July as the quick reaction force in Northern Afghanistan. Parliamentary authorization for the Afghanistan deployment must be renewed by October, when it expires.