Merkel ally forced out over Afghan cover-up scandal (Roundup)

Nov 27, 2009, 14:40 GMT

Berlin - Former German defence minister Franz Josef Jung resigned his post as labour minister on Friday amid accusations of a cover-up of civilian casualties in an airstrike in Afghanistan.

   'I take the political responsibility for the internal information policy in the defence ministry' he told reporters in Berlin.

   Jung, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), was defence minister on September 4, when a German officer ordered an airstrike that likely killed dozens of civilians.

The scandal, which has threatened to turn into the most serious of Merkel's four years in power, broke Thursday in a report by mass- circulation daily Bild, which said that in the days immediately after the attack Jung likely withheld his knowledge of civilian casualties from the public.

The opposition have accused him of either not being honest with the public, or not having his own ministry under control.

   However in his resignation address Jung said 'I have correctly informed the public as well as the parliament about what I knew.'

Social Democratic opposition leader Frank-Walter Steinmeier however repeated calls for a full parliamentary investigation.

'It's about more than just the misconduct of a few individual people, its about a basic question of parliamentary democracy. The people of this country have a right to clarification,' he told the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper.

The opposition Greens and Left Party also called for a parliamentary investigation.

'Jung goes, Merkel's crisis remains,' the Green party said in a statement.

Current Defence Minister Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg, who took over in October after the general election, effectively sacked the top army officer, General Inspector Wolfgang Schneiderhan, as well as a state secretary in the defence ministry on Thursday.

That move came when it emerged that they had withheld nine documents relating to casualties in the airstrike from him.

Guttenberg said that he would take the unusual step of making the classified documents available to parliament - but did not confirm a full investigation.

   On September 4, Georg Klein, a German colonel in charge of the Kunduz Provincial Recontruction Team (a joint civilian- military effort) called for a US air force strike on two oil tankers that had been hijacked by Afghan militants.

   Up to 142 people, including militants and bystanders - believed to be villagers opportunistically taking fuel from the trucks - were killed.

   News of Jung's imminent resignation came first in the government's regular Friday press conference, when after over an hour of questioning, Merkel's spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm was asked if he did not know Jung would resign or if he was merely not saying at this point in time. He responded: 'The latter.'

In a press conference in Berlin Thursday, Merkel declined to enthusiastically back her party colleague, setting the stage for his resignation the next day.

   Merkel is currently in talks with officials to appoint a successor to Jung.