Foiled Plot
June 24, 2007
German authorities learned of a plot to attack Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung when he visited Afghanistan earlier this month, the Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported.
Jung visited German troops in northern Afghanistan on June 6 but the trip was not officially announced for security reasons.
The German intelligence services warned of the plot just before the minister landed near Kabul, Bild said, citing the defense ministry and sources close to the intelligence community.
"The tip-off about a planned attack was very clear," the defense ministry is quoted as telling the newspaper.
The newspaper report was later confirmed by defense ministry spokesman Thomas Raabe.
He told reporters Jung's delegation was warned of a possible attack just after the minister had paid a visit to Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul on June 6.
"When the minister was due to travel from the president's palace to the airport, we received a tip-off that an attack could take place on the road," he said.
He said the German army then changed the minister's travel route.
Tanks and armored vehicles
Journalists travelling with the minister reported at the time that tanks protected Jung's motorcade on its journey through the Afghan capital and that on the way back to the airport some members of the delegation were ordered to travel in armored vehicles.
Jung met Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul and also inspected German troops serving with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.
ISAF force
Germany has around 2,900 troops in Afghanistan serving in ISAF, most of them in the relatively calm north.
On May 19, a suicide bomb killed three German soldiers and six civilians in a crowded market in the town of Kunduz, 300 kilometers (190 miles) north of Kabul, in Germany's biggest loss in Afghanistan since 2003.
A few days after Jung's visit, a newspaper said a foreign office report had warned that more attacks on German troops were to be expected.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and her co-ruling Christian Democrats have promised to keep the troops in Afghanistan, despite recent polls which show 61 percent of Germans believe the soldiers should leave.
In a speech last week, Jung said if the troops were pulled out Afghanistan could "revert to being a training center for terrorism from which the attacks on September 11 were carried out."