Germany aims to hand over responsibility for security to Afghan forces in at least one of the country's northern provinces next year, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Friday, according to Reuters. Speaking ahead of a conference in Kabul on July 20, Westerwelle said it was time for Afghanistan and its neighbours to assume greater responsibility for maintaining order. "Only the Afghan government itself can make peace with those they are fighting," Westerwelle told the lower house of parliament. "It's also the task of the international community to bring Afghanistan's neighbours into this process." Germany has some 4,600 soldiers in Afghanistan, a deployment which polls show a majority of the German population opposes. Despite an increase in the U.S.-dominated foreign force to 150,000, the Taliban insurgency is at its strongest since the hardline Islamists were overthrown in 2001. U.S. forces however are set to begin withdrawing starting next July, leaving Afghan forces to take the lead. The U.S. administration has not said how many troops will be withdrawn or how quickly they will leave. Lawmakers in Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling centre-right coalition say her government will have to take a significant step towards bringing the troops home before the next federal election in 2013. The government had raised the prospect of beginning a partial withdrawal from Afghanistan as early as this year, but Westerwelle said 2011 was now the target. NATO forces aimed to begin entrusting security to Afghan forces in "three or four provinces" in 2011, he said. "Of these there should be at least one which is inside our area of responsibility in the north," Westerwelle said. A decision on what conditions to attach to a handover would be made at a NATO summit in November in Lisbon, he added, noting that efforts to build consensus in Afghanistan had to be stepped up, including reintegration of Taliban militants. "A lasting, self-sustaining stabilisation of Afghanistan can only come about through a political process that balances out the interests of the various ethnicities and social groups in Afghanistan," Westerwelle said.
