By IRNA,
Berlin : With no end in sight to the Afghan war, German tax payers have paid almost three billion euros for their country’s controversial NATO-led military mission in Afghanistan since late 2001, the weekly Der Spiegel news magazine said in a report to hit the newsstands on Sunday.
Replying to an inquiry by a female radical leftist legislator, Gesine Loetsch of the Left (Linke) party, the German Finance Ministry presented the cost figures for Berlin’s Afghan military operations from December 2001 through October 13, 2008.
If the German Parliament approves the 14-month extension of the Afghan mandate this week, this would add 688 million euros to the overall cost so far.
Germany’s military expenditures in Afghanistan are nearly four times as high as its civilian aid.
Berlin has spent around 830 million euros in non-military assistance for the war-stricken country.
The German cabinet gave green light Tuesday to a 14-month extension of German troop deployment in Afghanistan.
It also agreed to raise the number of Afghanistan-based German soldiers from 3,500 to 4,500 soldiers as part of a bill to be discussed by the parliament later in the day.
The German Parliament is expected to approve the bill once it comes up for vote in mid October.
Germany has deployed around 3,500 soldiers in northern Afghanistan and Kabul as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in addition to police instructors and civilian reconstruction workers.
Some 28 German soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since January 2002, according to official statistics.
Most Germans oppose their country’s participation in the war in Afghanistan.
Germany has also been the scene of popular mass protests against extending the Afghan military mission.