German defense minister refuses to quit

BERLIN, Dec. 14 (UPI) -- German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg is refusing to resign over his role in handling a deadly NATO air raid in Afghanistan.

Guttenberg has been accused of wrongly forcing the resignation of two top military officials and of not disclosing early on what he really knew about the Sept. 4 airstrike that killed an estimated 142 people, many of them civilians.

"Even if it gets really stormy, I will stay right where I am," Guttenberg told RTL television on Sunday. "That's the way I was brought up and that's the way I'm going to deal with it."

He also vowed that he did not withhold any information about the bombing from the public. Instead, he said that Gen. Wolfgang Schneiderhahn and Deputy Defense Minister Peter Wichert failed to pass on to him crucial details about the airstrike. Schneiderhahn and Wichert have since had to resign.

Schneiderhahn has contested that version, saying in a TV interview that all relevant information had been in a NATO report Guttenberg accessed after entering into office.

Allegations of a coverup already cost his predecessor in office, Franz Josef Jung, his job in German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Cabinet.

Guttenberg has admitted that the raid, executed by a pair of U.S. F-15 bombers on the order of a German colonel, was a "mistake."

The strike targeted two fuel trucks stuck in a riverbank some 5 miles outside a German base. The trucks had been seized by Taliban insurgents, and the German colonel feared they could be used to attack his base.

He had previously defended the move, calling it "militarily appropriate" but since had to backtrack when it surfaced that many civilians were killed.

Guttenberg has vowed to compensate victims of the airstrike that targeted two fuel trucks seized by the Taliban but injured and killed many civilians also present at the site.

Members of opposition parties have called for a parliamentary inquiry. Recently, rumors surfaced that a German commando unit in Afghanistan, the elite KSK, might have been involved in the planning of the airstrike.

Germany has some 4,250 troops in Afghanistan and is facing calls to send more to go along with a greater NATO surge. However, the mission is increasingly unpopular in Germany, with the recent bombing campaign fueling calls for German troops to be pulled out of Afghanistan. Instead, Germany has promised to boost its police training in Afghanistan and may send more troops after an Afghanistan conference early next year.