EU nations slam NATO strike in Afghanistan

SWEDEN: EU ministers on Saturday slammed NATO over an air strike that left scores dead in Afghanistan, just as Europe was hoping to shift its attention from conflict to nation-building.

“This was a big mistake,” French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told reporters as he arrived for a second day of talks with his EU counterparts in Stockholm.

The West should “work with the Afghan people, not to bomb them,” he added, as the NATO action partly diverted attention from a new EU initiative to help Afghans set up a secure, viable and democratic state.

Germany’s European Affairs Minister Guenther Gloser was mum on the issue after it emerged that German troops had ordered Friday’s air strike, in which up to 90 people, including civilians, were killed according to Afghan authorities.

However, German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung defended the action, saying in the Bild newspaper: “When just six kilometres (four miles) away from us, the Taliban take two fuel tankers, that represents a serious danger for us.”

A state secretary in the German defence ministry, Thomas Kossendey, said the strike was aimed at preventing a Taliban suicide attack against German troops. “We can only assume that the hijacked tankers were going to be driven toward the German army’s camp to cause as much as damage as possible in a suicide attack,” he told the regional daily Nordwest Zeitung.

“That’s why the German army acted in such an intense manner” and asked for NATO’s help, he said.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, hosting the talks as his country currently holds the EU presidency, said, “Every death is a tragedy in Afghanistan. I don’t think we’ll win this war by killing.” His Italian counterpart Franco Frattini did not mince his words either: “These are terrible acts that should never happen.”

NATO has promised an enquiry into the incident which has also been criticised by Britain and which came just as the European ministers were hoping to concentrate on building up Afghanistan’s infrastructure and provide it with the tools required to become a fully functioning and viable democracy.

Stockholm, Sunday, AFP