Germany plans to send 600 more soldiers to Afghanistan to help provide security for presidential elections in August, a NATO diplomat said Monday.
The troops, who add to around 3,500 German personnel already in Afghanistan, will arrive six weeks before the polls and remain until after any possible second round of voting is held in September, the diplomat said.
The polls will be a key test of President Hamid Karzai's rule as well as seven-year-old US and NATO-led efforts to help stabilise Afghanistan and spread the rule of its weak central government across the strife-torn country.
Those efforts have been undermined by a Taliban-led insurgency entrenched in southern and eastern regions.
Germany, which has been criticised for not sending troops to those regions, has its personnel deployed in the relatively quiet north of the country.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) comprises more than 51,000 troops from some 40 nations.
Last month, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer appealed for 10,000 more soldiers to bolster security for the elections.
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