German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Saturday he hoped to win parliamentary backing for a step-up in the number of military trainers with the Afghan army. In an interview with Der Spiegel released Saturday, two day before the weekly news magazine hits the streets, he said, "Over the summer we have to discuss an increased commitment to training the Afghan armed forces," according to dpa. He declined to rule out the trainers operating in the south where a war with the Taliban is in full swing, saying, "We cannot over-rule our armed forces' expertise as to how and in what condition the training is given." In a radio interview Saturday, he said Germany had to live up to its international commitments to train the Afghan military and police. It was "in deficit." "We agreed to train 85,000 Afghan soldiers by 2010 and are barely over 30,000 so far," he said.
