Minister Defends Elite Unit

Jung told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that he wanted to prevent the reputation of the special unit, called KSK, from being blackened.

"The events, which are now five years old, will be cleared up," he said in an interview. "(The unit) is important for Germany's security and for the security of Germany soldiers abroad."

The elite unit, whose activities are often kept secret, has found itself in the headlines due to the allegations of Murat Kurnaz, a German-born Turk who claimed earlier this month that two German soldiers came to interrogate him at a camp near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar in 2002 and slammed his head into the ground.

Kurnaz had been arrested by US forces in Pakistan shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and transferred to a US prison in Kandahar before being incarcerated in the US Guantanamo Bay jail, where he was held for four years.

He was released this year because of a lack of proof that he had belonged to a terrorist organization.

The defense ministry says it has no evidence that the allegations are true. The German government said on Wednesday that while there was proof of "verbal contact" between Kurnaz and soldiers, it had found nothing to back up the more serious claims.

In the newspaper interview, Jung also called for an extension of the mandate for "Enduring Freedom," the multinational military operation aimed at countering terrorism and bringing stability to Afghanistan.

"Especially in view of the tense security situation in Afghanistan, it would be negligent not to extend the mandate," he said.

Investigation and calls for more oversight

On Thursday, senior members of Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government said the parliament's defense committee announced it would conduct an investigation into the matter.

"The accusations that Kurnaz has made against members of the army's KSK special forces must be cleared up quickly and without reserve," Merkel's Christian Democrats and their coalition partners, the Social Democrats, said in a joint statement.

But the Green Party's spokesperson for defense issues, Angelika Beer, has demanded an oversight committee be formed to look at the unit's missions. According to statements she made to the Netzeitung Internet news site, such a committee would act in a similar fashion as the information agency oversight committees, through which all parliamentary groups as well as political and military leaders are "regularly and comprehensively" apprised of events.

The assurances of Defense Minister Jung, that procedures has been put in place to prevent future communication breakdowns, such as those that occurred in the Kurnaz case, did not satisfy Beer. She said the new procedures did not obviate the need for more oversight of the special forces.

But Jung defended the secrecy around the KSK, saying it was for the protection of the soldiers.

"At the same time, I want to inform representatives of the defense committee more thoroughly," he said.